Delivering building demand flexibility for grid-interactive operation: from perception and cognition to decision, execution, and verification

As both buildings and power systems undergo rapid decarbonization, demand flexibility (DF) in buildings has emerged as a key enabler for renewable energy integration, grid reliability, energy resilience, and efficient and low carbon operation. By dynamically adjusting building energy use in response to grid requirements, DF can help reduce building operational costs, respond to renewable variability, reduce peak demand, alleviate network congestion, and enhance overall system stability. Consequently, significant research efforts have examined building DF from multiple perspectives, including flexibility definitions, resources, characterization, assessment, optimization, and application scenarios. However, the effective delivery of DF in buildings requires an integrated, end-to-end approach spanning perception, cognition, decision, execution, and verification, which remains a critical gap in the existing literature. This review addresses this gap by proposing a layered architecture that integrates these stages into a coherent framework and provides insights from existing studies in this field. It synthesizes enabling methods, clarifies cross-layer interactions, and examines how data, models, control strategies, implementation mechanisms, and evaluation approaches collectively support DF delivery. Critical cross-layer challenges are identified, and future research priorities for robust and trustworthy DF delivery are outlined. This work establishes a conceptual foundation for advancing interoperable, grid-responsive, and practically deployable DF solutions in buildings, supporting both building decarbonization and more efficient, resilient grid operation

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Publication Details

Journal
Applied Energy
Published
2026-08-14
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2026.128668
Primary Topic
Smart Grid Energy Management
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Delivering building demand flexibility for grid-interactive operation: from perception and cognition to decision, execution, and verification

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Delivering building demand flexibility for grid-interactive operation: from perception and cognition to decision, execution, and verification

Muhammad Talha Siddique, Hicham Johra, Bingtong Guo, Zoltán Nagy, Maomao Hu, Henrik Madsen, Kun Zhang, Felix Stegemerten, Hanbei Zhang, Rongling Li, Xuyuan Kang, Wei Luo, Srinivas Katipamula, Menglong Lu, Laurent Georges, Xiao Wang, Sara Willems, Wanbin Dou, Mingyang Huang, Noah Hankinson, Shahab Tohidi, Ava Mohammadi, Flavie Didier, Xiaochen Yang, Reza Mokhtari, Rui Tang, Zhenjun Ma, Anand Prakash, Dimitrios Rovas, Xinlei Zhou, Zheng O'Neill, Bing Dong, José Candanedo, Hangxin Li
article en

Abstract

As both buildings and power systems undergo rapid decarbonization, demand flexibility (DF) in buildings has emerged as a key enabler for renewable energy integration, grid reliability, energy resilience, and efficient and low carbon operation. By dynamically adjusting building energy use in response to grid requirements, DF can help reduce building operational costs, respond to renewable variability, reduce peak demand, alleviate network congestion, and enhance overall system stability. Consequently, significant research efforts have examined building DF from multiple perspectives, including flexibility definitions, resources, characterization, assessment, optimization, and application scenarios. However, the effective delivery of DF in buildings requires an integrated, end-to-end approach spanning perception, cognition, decision, execution, and verification, which remains a critical gap in the existing literature. This review addresses this gap by proposing a layered architecture that integrates these stages into a coherent framework and provides insights from existing studies in this field. It synthesizes enabling methods, clarifies cross-layer interactions, and examines how data, models, control strategies, implementation mechanisms, and evaluation approaches collectively support DF delivery. Critical cross-layer challenges are identified, and future research priorities for robust and trustworthy DF delivery are outlined. This work establishes a conceptual foundation for advancing interoperable, grid-responsive, and practically deployable DF solutions in buildings, supporting both building decarbonization and more efficient, resilient grid operation

Applied EnergyVol. 426
Université de Sherbrooke (CA), Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HK), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (US), Tianjin University (CN), National University of Singapore (SG), SINTEF (NO), Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NO), University of Wollongong (AU), University College London (GB), Syracuse University (US), Carnegie Mellon University (US), Eindhoven University of Technology (NL), RWTH Aachen University (DE), Texas A&M University (US), Technical University of Denmark (DK), École de Technologie Supérieure (CA), Tsinghua University (CN), KU Leuven (BE)
U.S. Department of Energy, Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland, UK Research and Innovation, Australian Government, European Commission, Ministry of Education - Singapore, Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, Energistyrelsen, Vlaamse regering, Energiteknologisk udviklings- og demonstrationsprogram, Economic and Social Research Council, Australian Research Council, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Affordable and clean energy
Openalex Percentile: Top 18%
Smart Grid Energy Management
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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