Flexibility of Commercial Building HVAC Fan as Ancillary Service for\n Smart Grid

Abstract

In this paper, we model energy use in commercial buildings using empirical\ndata captured through sMAP, a campus building data portal at UC Berkeley. We\nconduct at-scale experiments in a newly constructed building on campus. By\nmodulating the supply duct static pressure (SDSP) for the main supply air duct,\nwe induce a response on the main supply fan and determine how much ancillary\npower flexibility can be provided by a typical commercial building. We show\nthat the consequent intermittent fluctuations in the air mass flow into the\nbuilding does not influence the building climate in a human-noticeable way. We\nestimate that at least 4 GW of regulation reserve is readily available only\nthrough commercial buildings in the US. Based on predictions this value will\nreach to 5.6 GW in 2035. We also show how thermal slack can be leveraged to\nprovide an ancillary service to deal with transient frequency fluctuations in\nthe grid. We consider a simplified model of the grid power system with time\nvarying demand and generation and present a simple control scheme to direct the\nancillary service power flow from buildings to improve on the classical\nautomatic generation control (AGC)-based approach. Simulation results are\nprovided to show the effectiveness of the proposed methodology for enhancing\ngrid frequency regulation.\n