Active Buildings: Concept, Definition, Enabling Technologies, Challenges, and Literature Review

Due to the energy crisis and air pollution issues, energy-saving and demand flexibility in buildings have received significant attention in recent years since buildings are a large energy consumer sector in the today’s world. For this aim, the conventional buildings are moving towards active buildings to solve these challenges. Active buildings are flexible and energy-efficient buildings, which contribute to energy sustainability by providing energy services for the grid and sharing energy with neighboring buildings. The main characteristic of active buildings is their flexibility in viewpoint of energy consumption. However, the self-generation of electricity by buildings is also widely focused on by researchers. In this chapter, an overview on promising active buildings is outlined. Firstly, the concept and definition of such buildings are discussed. In addition, the energy services that can be provided by active buildings are described. The enabling technologies and challenges of such concept are also discussed. Finally, a review of previous works conducted on this subject is accomplished. The literature includes load forecasting, enabling technologies, energy storage systems, distributed generation, demand-side response programs, ancillary services, and so forth. Finally, the chapter is concluded by giving some remarks and recommendations.