OBC-FLEX: Enabling Interoperable Demand Flexibility in Commercial Buildings

Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings Virtual Power Plants

Recipient Location

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Project Status

Project Update

The award has been established and all primary partners are now contracted. The Institutional Review Board protocol is approved, and the team is currently conducting interviews with industry experts and site partners. These early insights will inform the refinement of the demand flexibility control sequences.

The Issue

Large commercial buildings often lack standardized control sequences, leading to high costs for manual demand response programming. Current proprietary systems lack interoperability, preventing building owners from scaling flexibility across diverse portfolios. This project addresses these gaps by creating vendor-neutral workflows and open-source tools.

Project Innovation

The team will refine open specifications for demand flexibility control sequences into a free, machine-readable open-source library, replacing traditional natural-language specifications and manual, error-prone workflows. This library utilizes emerging ASHRAE Standards 223P and 231P1 to ensure semantic interoperability, overcoming the lack of standardization in vendor-specific2 point names that currently hinders sequence portability across buildings. By implementing these sequences in collaboration with five major BAS providers to develop automated transition pathways, the project creates an end-to-end solution that reduces manual customization typical of today’s custom-made installations. Deployment in real-world buildings following a virtual-before-physical validation using the BOPTEST framework will ensure performance and enhance the scalability of high-performance controls.

Project Goals

Develop new open specifications for best-in-class demand flexibility sequences

Create an open-source implementation of such sequences based on standards

Integrate such sequences into multiple commercial BAS and EMIS platforms

Test the sequences and workflows in the field

Identify a pathway to extend this approach to other buildings

in the participating campuses and to other commercial buildings in California

Project Benefits

This project will provide ratepayer benefits through enhanced electricity reliability and reduced costs. It will also directly benefit the demonstration sites, all of which are in DAC or LI areas, and the local distribution grid, given the large impact of campuses on utility feeders. When scaled up, these solutions can reduce California peak load by 0.3 to 1.3 gigawatts (GW). However, the most significant benefits will likely stem from the improved ability to promote the widespread deployment of demand-flexible controls across California. As the developed technology matures and gains market share, supported by project partners and future stakeholders utilizing the open-source software and tools created by the project, the benefits to ratepayers will increase significantly.

Consumer Appeal

This project enables large building owners to participate in demand flexible programs from their utilities without requiring significant controls retrofits and investments. The solution from the project provides building owners and operators the ability to reduce their energy costs and increase their revenue through participating in demand response programs. The latter aspect also supports the utilities by deferring capital distribution network upgrades