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1. Demand response through ventilation and latent load adjustment for commercial buildings in humid climate zones

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2024.123940  

   Ma, Zhihao; Cui, Shuang; Chen, Jianli (November 2024, Applied Energy)

   Space cooling constitutes >10% of worldwide electricity consumption and is anticipated to rise swiftly due to intensified heatwaves under emerging climate change. The escalating electricity demand for cooling services will challenge already stressed power grids, especially during peak times of demand. To address this, the adoption of demand response to adjust building energy use on the end-user side becomes increasingly important to adapt future smart buildings with rapidly growing renewable energy sources. However, existing demand response strategies predominantly explore sensible cooling energy as flexible building load while neglecting latent cooling energy, which constitutes significant portions of total energy use of buildings in humid climates. Hence, this paper aims to evaluate the demand response potential by adjusting latent cooling energy through ventilation control for typical medium commercial office buildings in four representative cities across different humid climate zones, i.e., Miami, Huston, Atlanta, and New York in the United States (US). As the first step, the sensible heat ratio, defined as sensible cooling load to total building load (involving both sensible and latent load), in different humid climates are calculated. Subsequently, the strategy to adjust building latent load through ventilation control (LLVC) is explored and implemented for demand response considering the balance of energy shifting, indoor air quality, and energy cost. Results reveal that adjusting building ventilation is capable of achieving 30%–40% Heating, Ventilation, and Air-conditioning (HVAC) cooling demand flexibility during HVAC operation while among this, the latent cooling energy contributes 56% ~ 66.4% to the overall demand flexibility. This work provides a feasible way to improve electricity grid flexibility in humid climates, emphasizing the significant role of adjusting latent cooling energy in building demand response. 

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2. Demand Response Potential of Drinking Water Distribution Networks

   Stuhlmacher, Anna; Mathieu, Johanna L (January 2025, Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS))

   Pumps in drinking water distribution networks can be controlled to participate in demand response programs. In this paper, we estimate the demand response potential of water distribution networks based on actual network data. We calculate the power and energy capacities of community water systems within Wisconsin and Arizona, drawing on publicly available data of consumer water demand, population served, storage tanks, and pump specifications. We then extrapolate this data to get an order-of-magnitude estimate for the entire United States. Overall, we found that water distribution networks are sizable demand response assets with an estimated power capacity of 13 GW and energy capacity of 750 GWh in the United States. We also found that large and very large utilities may be the best demand response candidates. This paper also discusses factors impacting water supply flexibility and future research directions. 

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3. Stochastic Model Predictive Control-Based Electric Taxi Fleet Coordination under Solar Power Uncertainty

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3744748  

   Yuan, Yukun; Jia, Mian; Zhao, Yue; Lin, Shan (October 2025, ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems)

   As electric vehicles (EVs) gradually replace fuel vehicles and provide transportation services in cities, e.g., electric taxi fleets, solar-powered charging stations with energy storage systems have been deployed to provide charging services for EV fleets. The mixture of solar-powered and traditional charging stations brings efficiency challenges to charging stations and reliability challenges to power systems. In this article, we explore e-taxis’ mobility and charging demand flexibility to co-optimize service quality of e-taxi fleets and system cost of charging infrastructures, e.g., solar power under-utilization and reliability issues of power distribution networks due to reverse power flow. We propose SAC, an e-taxi coordination framework to dispatch e-taxis for charging or serving passengers under spatial-temporal dynamics of renewable energy and passenger mobility, which integrates the renewable power generation estimation from a forecast system. Moreover, we extend our design to a stochastic Model Predictive Control problem to handle the uncertainty of solar power generation, aiming to fully utilize generated solar power. Our data-driven evaluation shows that SAC significantly outperforms existing solutions, enhancing the usage rate of solar power by up to 172.6%, while maintaining e-taxi service quality with very small overhead, i.e., reducing the supply-demand ratio by 2.2%. 

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4. Combined design and control optimization of heat pumps in residential buildings

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2025.136317  

   Vadali, Phani Arvind; Krarti, Moncef (July 2025, Energy)

   Elsevier (Ed.)

   Electrification of buildings through deployment of heat pumps requires innovative design and control strategies to reduce their energy demands on the grid. Instead of the sequential approach of optimizing the design specifications and control strategies, this paper considers the benefits of the combined and simultaneous optimization of design capacities and control settings for heat pumps when specified for US residential buildings. A Genetic Algorithm optimizer is used to simultaneously adjust the main and supplementary coil capacities for the heat pump as well as the indoor temperature setpoints to minimize annual heating and cooling energy needs as well as occupant thermal discomfort levels. In comparison to design and control baselines, it is found that simultaneous optimization can achieve 21% and 7% reductions in heating and cooling annual energy consumption for the cases of variable speed and single speed heat pumps. Moreover, the analysis results indicate that these reductions are nearly double the savings obtained when design only and control only based optimizations are considered. The presented combined design and control optimization approach could potentially provide an effective paradigm shift in specifying heat pump systems for residential buildings. 

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5. Impact of Heating Electrification and Building Retrofit on the Indoor Thermal Environment and Electricity Demand

   https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4070641  

   Rodriguez, Alfredo A; Amadeh, Ali; Lee, Zachary E; Humphreys, Lee; Zhang, K Max (February 2026, ASME Journal of Engineering for Sustainable Buildings and Cities)

   Retrofitting building stock through heating electrification and energy efficiency improvements is essential for achieving carbon neutrality. Understanding the effects of electrification and efficiency retrofits on building-resident satisfaction and adaptive behaviors is important, as these directly impact retrofitting success, adoption rates, energy consumption, and performance. There is a gap in understanding the combined effects of heating electrification and building efficiency retrofits. Using data collected over 2.5 years, we performed integrated qualitative and quantitative analyses to evaluate the combined effects of heat pump electrification and a roof insulation retrofitting in a 10-unit New York City apartment building. Building-resident satisfaction with each strategy was assessed, and impacts on occupant thermal comfort, energy behavior, indoor thermal environment, and energy consumption were analyzed. Despite perceived challenges and resident skepticism, air source heat pumps (ASHPs) provided adequate indoor thermal comfort. ASHPs were preferred over steam boiler heating for controllability, noise reduction, and improved thermal comfort. Unintended benefits included improved aesthetics, reduced real estate needs, and decreased burn potential. With heat pumps, some residents adopted energy-conservative behaviors while others adopted “comfort-taking” behaviors, prioritizing comfort over conservation. The roof insulation retrofit further improved resident thermal comfort and decreased total building heating energy requirements by 25.3–34.2% and heating peak power requirements by 10.7%. The retrofit also improved ASHP efficiency in previously uninsulated spaces, effectively mitigating heat pump undersizing effects. Combined energy retrofitting strategies could play a key role in ensuring thermal comfort and building energy efficiency toward carbon neutrality. 

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