Enhancing low-carbon building operations leveraging demand response driven by renewable energy consumption contributions

In the pursuit of sustainable low-carbon energy practices, demand response (DR) has emerged as a pivotal strategy, particularly in the management of building energy consumption. However, current demand management methods often lack a thorough evaluation of building carbon reduction benefits and fall short in promoting grid decarbonization. This paper proposes a low-carbon operation optimization method for buildings, with a novel DR strategy aimed at facilitating local renewable energy consumption and system-level renewables integration. Considering local and systemic renewable shares, an evaluation framework is first introduced for quantitative building energy assessment in each period. The building loads with controllable flexibilities are then grouped and aggregated based on their elasticity characteristics and probability distribution. Finally, a low-carbon optimization model is established, leveraging the DR strategy for sustainable building operations through flexible load regulation. Utilizing measured building data in Shanghai, a case study with extensive analysis validates the effectiveness of the methodology. The results suggest that following DR implementation, the similarity between the building load profile and the systemic renewable share improves by 34.48 %. Moreover, carbon emissions decrease by 5.27 % at the same level of building energy consumption. Further analysis highlights that energy storage can enhance load adjustment capabilities and the potential for reducing carbon emissions. Compared to conventional DR programs , the proposed strategy demonstrates significant advantages of abundant flexibility and low-carbon benefits. The widespread implementation of low-carbon operations in large-scale building groups has profound implications for integrating renewable energy and achieving system decarbonization goals. © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.