BIM coverage in demand response management: A pilot study in campus buildings

In the U.S., buildings account for a large portion of the total electricity consumption, which gives pressure on the national grid during peak hours. Demand response (DR) programs are attractive options to alleviate the pressure by incentivizing owners to reduce electricity usage during event times. Portfolio owners, who are willing to sign up for DR programs, need to work with third aggregator companies to generate customized curtailment protocols and determine the capacity of electricity reduction per building. These protocols provide alternative operations for buildings during the event with the aim to save electricity up to the capacity being enrolled. One of the challenges is that on-site facility managers (FMs) or off-site operators, who are responsible for executing protocols, struggle to collect accurate information of space occupancies and components, which results in compromises in electricity conservation and discomfort for occupants. Building information models (BIMs), which contain integrated facility information, can be leveraged to execute the curtailment protocols efficiently. Given these problems, the objectives are to first identify typically required facility information in managing DR events and then evaluate the capabilities of BIMs in providing such information in DR with the vision to control such actions from a central location. This paper presents the results of a case analysis on 20 campus buildings that are enrolled in DR programs. We extracted the essential information from the curtailment protocols and examined the possibility of retrieving such information in BIMs by analyzing industry foundation classes (IFC). The initial results show that BIMs can provide DR related information such as type and location of HVAC and lighting components, zoning details, and locations. The analysis results will serve as a foundational work for BIM and building automation system integration to aid DR events from a central location for efficiency instead of actions taken by FMs on-site.