The Grid Interactive Efficient Buildings (GEBs) use a mix of solar panels, battery energy storage systems (BESS), smart meters and appliances, and other technologies to provide grid services, delay costly grid infrastructure upgrades, manage carbon emissions and improve grid resilience during extreme weather. It's just one of many proof points that the long-awaited future of GEBs is here.
This white paper from Microgrid Knowledge, presented in partnership with Honeywell, provides insights on how organizations can navigate their own unique journeys to turn their buildings into GEBs. It explores the challenges of pursuing GEBs and how organizations can overcome them to achieve benefits, including®:
• Reduced energy costs, from both energy efficiency and through shifting energy use, to take advantage of grid electricity prices
• Increased resilience for operations, including the use of microgrids to keep the power on when the electric grid faces an outage and the use of on-site distributed energy resources (DERs) to contribute to improved grid stability
• Enhanced comfort, productivity and satisfaction for building occupants using smart controls, sensors and analytics to adjust building settings
• Improved revenue from harnessing the power of on-site DERs and flexible building demand to provide grid services through demand response programs or ancillary services markets; and
• Improved sustainability both through managing energy use and using technology to match energy demand with periods of high clean energy supply
My Thoughts 💭
On paper this seems easy enough but in my experience this is very hard to do. The O&M on these systems is very technical and expensive. Then the local utility always limits how much energy you can provide back to the grid. In the report Utah is charging forward with this with over 700 GEBs but I think the tech still has a way to go before it is more mainstream and easier to operate and maintain.