Onsite Survey Unlocks Commercial Buildings’ Air-Conditioning Demand Response Potential

The intermittent and fluctuating renewable energy from supply-side urges the demand response (DR) to play an increasingly vital role at demand-side for balancing and flexibility provision. Centralized air conditioning in commercial buildings is expected to have huge demand response potential. As the basis of performing demand response, quantifying the demand response potential and understanding the on-site situation of centralized air conditioning are of great importance. Therefore, this study designs and performs the survey on the demand response potential from commercial buildings’ centralized air conditioning. The survey investigates the amount of flexible load, the communication function of the chiller, the cost of equipment retrofit, and the willingness of users to participate demand response. A total number of 41 centralized air conditioners were deeply investigated, the estimated flexible load is 4924kW, which accounts for 18% of the total investigated load from centralized air conditioners.