Commercial Building Planning and Retrofitting Strategy for Grid Services: Preprint

The increasing integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) plays an important role in improving energy consumption efficiency. In September 2020, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved Order 2222 that opens wholesale electricity markets to small capacity DERs. The benefit from this new FERC Order 2222 is that DERs, such as rooftop solar panels and batteries, will be able to participate in regional electricity markets and provide grid services. Meanwhile, the planning and operation strategies of DERs are facing new challenges to account for the impact of the wholesale market with numerous uncertainty factors. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a new planning and retrofitting model for long-term commercial building that considers both DER investment and market participation. Specifically, we explore the capability of implementing DERs for grid services. The effectiveness of the proposed model is validated using real-world data. Simulation results also validate that participating in grid services can significantly increase revenues through appropriate building energy management and shorten the payback period of DER investments.