Evaluating the energy flexibility potential of residential room air conditioners from the perspective of user thermal comfort: A case study in Chongqing

Room air conditioners (RAC) are typical devices used to regulate indoor temperatures in residential buildings during the summer, with temperature setting and usage time adjustments being common control methods. These control measures not only influence energy consumption but also impact indoor thermal comfort. To holistically evaluate the energy flexibility, this paper proposes the elastic-plastic index based on thermal comfort to evaluate energy flexibility potential. By dividing the PMV range into three comfort zones and defining energy adjustments as elastic, semi-elastic, and plastic based on the changes in PMV values following flexible control. This study employs clustering algorithm to identify 8 typical air conditioning usage patterns in Chongqing, and a case study was conducted to quantify the energy flexibility potential of community with 2000 households. The results indicate that for every 1 degrees C increase in the room set temperature, community energy consumption can decrease by approximately 100,000 kWh during the summer. The pre-cooling strategy, when applied without changing air conditioning usage duration, reduces the proportion of thermal discomfort caused by flexible control, though its effectiveness is influenced by the set temperature and pre-cooling duration. The study also found that if users' thermal comfort requirements are relaxed from |PMV| <0.5 to |PMV| <1, the energy flexibility potential can be significantly increased.