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Public Summary

BE-FLEX: a tool to evaluate energy flexibility in office buildings

The energy market is developing into a more dynamic and flexible market leading to the need for innovative business solutions to promote sustainability. One promising solution is energy flexibility, particularly regarding the thermal mass in buildings.

Energy flexibility allows every energy producer, consumer, and building manager to adapt the energy profile and installation management and select the optimal configuration of their assets, to decrease operational costs for electricity and/or CO2 footprint while ensuring thermal comfort and services for users. Additionally, flexible energy management in buildings allows buildings to reduce congestion and grid imbalance. As such, buildings can provide value to DSO/TSO.

For this design project, Royal BAM n.v. play a key role in addressing these goals given their position as constructors and building performance contractors. The company and particularly its department BAM Energy Systems b.v. are intensively active in the energy flexibility field, ensuring value and benefits to buildings and local energy communities. With the business aim and due to traditional barriers to getting energy flexibility assessments from buildings, this design project evaluated the potential energy flexibility for office buildings in the Netherlands, by exploiting the thermal mass of buildings, particularly office buildings.

In collaboration with BAM, SAI SB&C EngD has designed BE-FLEX: an energy flexibility evaluation tool for office buildings. Using optimized installation management, the buildings provide energy flexibility to improve financial and sustainable results within the thermal comfort boundaries for workers. BAM can use this tool to help the design-decision support to increase their business value sustainably.

BE-FLEX is an easy-to-use software-based tool that allows end-users to evaluate office buildings' potential energy flexibility value, depending on the type and energy assets. BE-FLEX exploits the available and free use of thermal mass for energy flexibility to increase financial results and to contribute towards the use of greener energy, without any substantial retrofit and/or investment for the building owner.

Subsidy: ‘Energy flexibility services from buildings by using adaptive comfort strategies (EFcomf)’ with reference number 1921502 (TKI1921)
Funded: TKI-Urban Energy