IEA ECES Annex 31 Final Report - Energy Storage with Energy Efficient Buildings and Districts: Optimization and Automation

At present, the energy requirements in buildings are majorly met from non-renewable sources where the contribution of renewable sources is still in its initial stage. Meeting the peak energy demand by non-renewable energy sources is highly expensive for the utility companies and it critically influences the environment through GHG emissions. In addition, renewable energy sources are inherently intermittent in nature. Therefore, to make both renewable and nonrenewable energy sources more efficient in building/district applications, they should be integrated with energy storage systems. Nevertheless, determination of the optimal operation and integration of energy storage with buildings/districts are not straightforward. The real strength of integrating energy storage technologies with buildings/districts is stalled by the high computational demand (or even lack of) tools and optimization techniques. Annex 31 aims to resolve this gap by critically addressing the challenges in integrating energy storage systems in buildings/districts from the perspective of design, development of simplified modeling tools and optimization techniques.