Energy Flexibility of Clusters of Buildings: development of an assessment tool

Having a simple tool that allows the evaluation of the energy flexibility potential of a user-defined cluster of buildings can have a paramount importance in a resource planning scenario. The aim of this work is to provide an overview of all the aspects that must be taken into consideration when a tool to quantify the energy flexibility of a cluster of buildings has to be implemented. A preliminary version of the tool implemented in Python is presented here. In this starting version, the user can select archetypes of buildings (i.e., different for thermal losses and heating system) and of occupancy patterns to compose a generic cluster located in a selected city. Then, the user can choose an imposed demand management strategy, which involves all or a part of the users, and evaluate the power and/or energy variations that follows.