IEN gladly accepted the invitation to speak about the future trends of green buildings with the TNB Property Services Department. Our presentation "Grid-Interactive Buildings: The future of low carbon buildings" sparked a good interest among the TNB staff with a long Q&A session and continued discussions during the tea break. And we agreed to continue the discussions....
A key point of the presentation was that buildings most definitely will play an important role in the global decarbonisation journey with respect to reducing greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency, by the use of less carbon intensive building materials, and by providing flexible energy demand, or what is often called grid-interactive buildings (GIB). As the world transitions to fluctuating renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, it becomes increasingly important that the demand side becomes flexible to match the available energy production. For buildings, this can be achieved by incorporating cooling storage systems (ice storage, chilled water storage, thermally activate building systems, battery storage banks incl. electric vehicles) as well as the ability to switch off or ramp down certain building systems. For example, it is okay to switch off fridges and freezers for a couple of hours, and it is acceptable to make temporary slight changes to the thermostat setting of buildings, for example, changing the air-conditioning temperature set-point from 23degC to 24degC. We are entering an interesting era on the demand-side where flexibility is becoming a key attribute and where buildings must be designed to deliver this demand flexibility.
Below a pdf version of our slides can be viewed and downloaded:
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