An experimental study of energy consumption in buildings providing ancillary services

Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in commercial buildings can provide ancillary services (AS) to the power grid, but by providing AS their energy consumption may increase. This inefficiency is evaluated using round-trip efficiency (RTE), which is defined as the ratio between the decrease and the increase in the HVAC system's energy consumption compared to the baseline consumption as a result of providing AS. This paper evaluates the RTE of a 30,000 m2 commercial building providing AS. We propose two methods to estimate the HVAC system's settling time after an AS event based on temperature and the air flow measurements from the building. Experimental data gathered over a 4-month period are used to calculate the RTE for AS signals of various waveforms, magnitudes, durations, and polarities. The results indicate that the settling time estimation algorithm based on the air flow measurements obtains more accurate results compared to the temperature-based algorithm. Further, we study the impact of the AS signal shape parameters on the RTE and discuss the practical implications of our findings.