Besides being the main consumer of energy, buildings can be smart energy hubs offering demand side flexibility for the grid. The main loads in buildings are heating and cooling and they have the advantage to be flexible if controlled in a smart way. There are plenty of ways in which controllers can act for increasing the demand side energy flexibility of buildings and different approaches in quantifying and assessing it.

This study uses a set of three existing key performance indicators to make a qualitative assessment on how the heating and cooling energy control is impacting indoor thermal comfort, the costs with energy and the self-consumption of the locally produced energy for a typical household located in different geographical conditions in Romania, under an electricity market design with a demand response program. The selected metrics are adapted for this analysis to allow a quick qualitative evaluation on how the building and its systems can reach the maximum achievable potential in terms of comfort, costs, and self-consumption. This approach can be applied both at design and operational phase. The results show that the participation in a demand response program does not influence negatively the indoor thermal comfort if constraints are imposed on these parameters, that the geography does not have a relevant impact upon the costs if a control technique dedicated for the participation in the demand response program is implemented and the participation in a demand response program does not influence the self-consumption.

除了成为能源的主要消耗者之外，建筑物还可以成为智能能源中心，为电网提供需求侧的灵活性。建筑物中的主要负载是供暖和制冷，如果以智能的方式进行控制，它们的优点是灵活。控制器可以采取多种方式来提高建筑物的需求侧能源灵活性，并且可以采用多种方法进行量化和评估。

这项研究使用了一组三个现有的关键性能指标，以定性评估供暖和制冷能源控制如何影响室内热舒适性，能源成本以及能源消耗以及当地典型家庭自产能源的自耗。在罗马尼亚的不同地理条件下，根据电力市场设计制定了需求响应计划。所选指标适用于此分析，以便就建筑物及其系统如何在舒适性，成本和自我消费方面达到最大可实现潜力进行快速定性评估。这种方法可以在设计阶段和运营阶段都应用。