To date, the assessment of the energy flexibility to be delivered by existing buildings and by their legacy HVAC systems is hindered by a lack of commonly agreed-upon methodologies. There are many research works in the field; however, many of them are focused on the design stage or, in case of addressing building operation, they are based on controlled experimental set-ups. The novelty of this paper lies in the fact that it develops and validates an original methodology for the Flexibility Function estimation to evaluate the delivered energy flexibility of several Automated Demand Response services applied on different heat pump systems working under real operations. The active interaction with several electricity markets, ranging from the Spanish day-ahead market to the German and Swiss ancillary services markets, have also been evaluated during the winter and spring seasons. The method results showed that heat pumps could offer a significant potential of flexibility in the analysed countries. Nevertheless, it has also been envisaged that some restrictions concerning reaction times and reliability may affect its readiness for certain ancillary services markets.

迄今为止，由于缺乏普遍认可的方法，对现有建筑及其传统 HVAC 系统提供的能源灵活性的评估受到阻碍。该领域有许多研究工作；然而，其中许多都专注于设计阶段，或者在解决建筑运营的情况下，它们基于受控的实验设置。本文的新颖之处在于它开发并验证了一种原始的灵活性函数估计方法，以评估在实际操作下工作的不同热泵系统上应用的几种自动需求响应服务的交付能源灵活性。与多个电力市场的积极互动，从西班牙的日前市场到德国和瑞士的辅助服务市场，在冬季和春季也进行了评估。方法结果表明，热泵可以在所分析的国家提供巨大的灵活性潜力。尽管如此，也有人认为，有关反应时间和可靠性的一些限制可能会影响其对某些辅助服务市场的准备。