Evaluation of the flexibility potential of buildings in the Greater Region to contribute to the management of the grid: study case for two reference buildings in Belgium

The Interreg Va Pth4GR²ID project (“Power to Heat For the Greater Region’ Renewables Integration and Development”) focuses on the determination of an optimal solution at a technical, economic and ecological point of view for the use of heat pumps in Greater Region (Wallonia BE, Luxembourg LU, Grand-Est FR, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland DE) as storage solution to absorb the part of local renewable electrical production that could not be injected into the grid (because of grid generation congestion risks). The decision to work with this kind of solution is justified because of the important part of total energy consumed in the residential sector for buildings heating. The present paper focuses on the flexibility potential evaluation of two residential buildings in order to evaluate their contribution to the electrical grid management in the Greater Region. The work is based upon simulations which are run with TRNSYS software. The capacity of buildings to deal with a heating system cut-off strategy during winter is assessed by means of comfort and energy performance indicators. The goal of this study is to assess in which way the selected buildings will respond to a heating cut-off (in case of grid congestion, the heat pumps will be switched off) and to analyse their “flexibility” as a function of design parameters series. The flexibility takes into account the comfort and the energy aspect of buildings performance. The first part of this paper presents the method used to select the reference buildings in Wallonia and the second part is dedicated to the evaluation their flexibility according to several heating management scenarios. This evaluation is realized by means of specific performance indicators which were developed the project.