Demand Shifting (Pre-Cooling)
Demand Shed Strategy Assessment Tools – Small and Large Commercial
Physical building models can enhance our understanding of building energy use, peak demand and assist in estimating the DR potential in commercial buildings, especially pre-cooling as a DR strategy. Entering building geometry and equipment information into the current energy simulation tools is time consuming and tedious. Demand Response Quick Assessment Tool was developed as an alternative and provides simplified building models and pre-determined building systems to evaluate the effectiveness of pre-cooling strategies without going through a detailed simulation exercise, but merely allowing the users to change a few important parameters. This project supports the further development of the DRQAT tool for evaluating demand reduction and cost saving in large commercial buildings as well as its use in actual field tests for both developing DR strategies and revisions of the tool.
Additional Contacts
Demand Shifting With Thermal Mass (Pre-Cooling)
The purpose of the "Demand Shifting with Thermal Mass" research project is to perform evaluation of the viability of shifting the electric usage of buildings by making adjustments in thermostat set temperatures. By pre-cooling the building during off-peak hours and allowing the building temperatures to rise within the comfort range in the on-peak hours, there is a real potential for shifting the buildings electric energy usage. This project involves small-scale evaluation of both small and large commercial buildings to address technical potential and customer acceptance. This project's key aspects include:
- Evaluation of implementation requirements and obstacles to assess technology readiness;
- Use of field results and energy simulations to evaluate demand-shifting potential for a limited number of building types and locations selected to provide the best indication of the wider potential of the commercial building stock, and;
- Use of limited customer focus groups and surveys to evaluate customer acceptance of the demand-response strategies.
