Unlocking flexibility in buildings through batteries: a case study of the Netherlands

Residential buildings account for a significant share of energy consumption and emissions, and heating electrification and rooftop photovoltaic (PV) generation create new challenges for distribution grids: import peaks from heat pumps and export peaks from PV surpluses. Battery energy storage systems (BESSs) can reduce peak demand and increase self-consumption. We report a multi-objective optimization of BESS sizing and dispatch in a 58-apartment positive-energy building in Utrecht, using a full year of measured smart-meter data. A linear-programming model with a Wöhler-based degradation cost trades off peak shaving and self-consumption across a capacity sweep, under two scenarios: a hypothetical configuration in which all 58 apartments and the facilities share one ± 110.4 kW connection instead of their individual connections (Scenario 1), and the current configuration, in which the BESSs serve only the facilities (Scenario 2). Consolidation rather than operational savings dominates the economics: once the BESS dispatch eliminates the 122 hours of PV export violation (the summed apartment exports exceeding the shared connection, purely from aggregation), the avoided cost of the 58 individual connections becomes accessible. The installed 70 kWh BESS crosses this threshold, with a payback of 0.55 years; the economic optimum lies near 280 kWh. Scenario 1 is notional: its economics depend on contractual and regulatory consolidation of the 58 connections, which is not addressed in this study. In Scenario 2, where peak-shaving has no value, the BESS adds modest self-consumption gains. The results show the value of measured multi-apartment data and of institutional drivers alongside technological ones in residential storage economics.