July 2023 | New paper entitled "Empirical Exploration of Zone-by-zone Energy Flexibility - a Non-intrusive Load Disaggregation Approach for Commercial Buildings" was published in *Energy and buildings*.

The full paper can be found here.

Excited to share our latest research on empirical exploration of zone-by-zone energy flexibility in commercial buildings. Coauthored with Jacques de Chalendar and Ram Rajagopal, our study combines repetitive demand response experimentation in multiple buildings with an experimental-data-driven non-intrusive load disaggregation approach.

The core idea revolves around developing a ‘virtual’ zonal power meter, providing high-granular insights into room-level energy use and energy flexibility, backed by real-world experimental data.

Among the key findings, we discovered that a small number of rooms accounted for a significant portion of energy use and energy flexibility, and surprisingly, the most energy-intensive rooms were not necessarily the most energy-flexible ones. For the three tested buildings, the top 30% of most energy-flexible zones provided around 80% of the total energy flexibility.

The tools we developed are poised to empower electric grid or district energy system operators to view the controlled energy-flexible entities as a fleet of zones rather than a fleet of buildings, unlocking the potential for targeted demand flexibility strategies that balance zone-by-zone energy reduction with zone-by-zone costs to occupants.