Techno-Economic Analysis of the Energy Resilience Performance of Energy-Efficient Buildings in a Cold Climate and Participation in the Flexibility Market

Abstract

Unexpected power outages and extreme weather encouraged research on energy-resilient buildings throughout the world. Resilient building research mainly focuses on hot weather rather than cold extremes. This study defines resilience terminologies based on the available literature and discusses the impact of energy efficiency on energy resilience performance in energy-efficient buildings due to abrupt power outages in an extremely cold climate. The assessment involves the case simulation of a multistory apartment located in southern Finland at design outdoor conditions (−26 °C) in IDA-ICE 4.8, a dynamic building simulation software, and its techno-economic assessment to ensure building resilience for up to 7 days of power outages. The assessment shows the efficient building envelope can enhance the time taken by the building to drop the indoor temperature to the threshold by approximately 15%. Additionally, the efficient heating system along with the building envelope can reduce the instantaneous power demand by up to 5.3 times, peak power demand by up to 3.5 times, and on average power consumption by 3.9 times. Similarly, the study finds that the total energy requirement during a blackout can be reduced by 4.1 times. The study concludes that enhanced building resilience is associated with energy-efficient parameters such as an efficient energy system and an efficient building envelope that has low thermal losses and high thermal inertia retention. The batteries contribute the maximum proportion to the overall retrofitting cost, and the proportion can go up to 70% in baseline configurations and 77% in efficient configurations of buildings. The analysis concludes that the required investment varies largely with the technologies involved and the combination of components of these energy systems. The assessment finds that the high investment costs associated with batteries and battery recharging costs are the main bottlenecks to feasible flexibility in market participation.