Building power demand response methods toward smart grid

Smart grid has been drawing attention particularly when renewable generations are integrated. In order to ensure high power reliability and energy efficiency in an electrical grid, research and application has been conducted at power supply side to solve the grid critical issues: peak load and power imbalance. However, as the major end-users at power demand side, buildings can also play a significant and cost-effective role by making use of their power demand responses. Different demand response programs (e.g., time- and incentive-based) have been developed and applied for encouraging the end-users to change their energy usage behaviors expected by the grid. Generally, buildings are able to limit and/or shift the power demands according to their own considerations under the specific incentives. A comprehensive review on the building power demand response methods is still missing, although research and application has been investigated and conducted on power demand aspects concerning the building system configuration and the control strategies of power demand optimization. This article, therefore, presents a comprehensive review on the strategies, impacts, and benefits of building power demand response in a grid to systematically evaluate and make better use of their demand response potentials. The possibility of developing proper building power demand response strategies for offline and online applications of the smart grid is also discussed.