Residential buildings with heat pumps, a verified bottom-up model for demand side management studies

The increasing use of intermittent renewable energy sources has reawakened the interest for demand side management, among which thermostatically controlled loads are a much mentioned option. One of these load types are residential buildings equipped with heat pumps, which can shift electricity consumption in time without compromising indoor thermal comfort. A prerequisite for the widespread application of this technology is a thorough understanding of its potential for demand side management. This type of studies needs models which on the one hand are computationally efficient enough to be scaled up to a country’s building stock but on the other hand are still a correct system representation. These issues are tackled by considering multiple levels of detail in reduced order models and verifying these models to a detailed simulation model. A second step is the aggregation of buildings with different occupant behavior. The aggregation’s performance is assessed by comparing the response to various electricity price profiles. Results show that the proposed aggregated model is sufficiently accurate in representating the considered buildings. The methodology presented in this paper can also be applied to other building types, resulting in an aggregated and verified model of a country’s building stock for demand side management studies.status: publishe