Enriching Public Disclosure Data to Evaluate Advanced District Energy Systems with Thermal Storage for Grid-Interactive Efficient Districts

Long, Nicholas Lee

Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation

Enriching Public Disclosure Data to Evaluate Advanced District Energy Systems with Thermal Storage for Grid-Interactive Efficient Districts Public Deposited

Analytics

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/0g354g953

Abstract

Commercial and residential building energy consumption contributes to 40\% of the \gls{US}' primary energy consumption. A focus on reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions is a critical step in achieving national and international goals to mitigate climate change impacts. Apart from established building efficiency efforts, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the building stock is challenging because it involves decarbonizing heating systems that have historically relied upon fossil fuel consumption. The majority of current space heating systems in the \gls{US} cannot be served by renewable energy and need to transition to electricity to achieve the desired decarbonization. Electrification of buildings can be tackled at a single building or district level, the latter being the focus of this research. District energy systems promise an accelerated decarbonization path as available waste heat sources (e.g., wastewater treatment plants and data centers) and building load diversity can potentially be harnessed. The creation and passing of building disclosure ordinances require building performance data to be released for public evaluation and scrutiny, identifying evidence-based opportunities for third-party energy service companies to implement energy efficiency upgrades. Taking advantage of the recent building disclosure data to improve building energy modeling workflows, showcases the available energy performance benefits of district energy systems. This research demonstrates how real samples of building public disclosure data with characteristics and metered energy consumption enables district energy system evaluation. Specifically, a district layout for a city block in Washington, DC, is analyzed and performance metrics pertaining to grid-interactive efficient district energy systems are evaluated.

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