Energy flexibility and management software in building clusters: A comprehensive review

Abstract

Electrification of energy use in buildings is a promising strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and facilitating the transition to a carbon-neutral society. Increasing the electrification of building energy demand creates opportunities to leverage energy flexibility for optimizing energy consumption within buildings. However, existing research on energy flexibility in buildings lacks a comprehensive evaluation of software solutions capable of effectively harnessing this potential. This study addresses this gap by conducting a detailed review of 203 commercial and 40 free open-source software tools designed for energy management in buildings and districts. These tools were evaluated based on their ability to manage key aspects of energy flexibility, including demand response, integration with renewable energy systems, scalability, and real-time control. Our analysis reveals that only 20% of commercial software supports robust energy flexibility, compared to 73% of free open-source tools. To guide future software development, this study proposes the following recommendations: (1) enhance scalability to enable deployment in large-scale community buildings, (2) incorporate benchmarking metrics to offer a Pareto front of optimal end-use solutions, (3) include key performance indicators (KPIs), (4) integrate fault detection, tolerance, and diagnostic methods, (5) implement cloud, fog, and edge computing services to improve reliability and operability, (6) ensure greater flexibility in communication, interoperability, and seamless data exchange, and (7) adopt Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain technologies.