Advanced Predictive Battery Control Strategy Enhances Energy Flexibility in Plus Energy Buildings

Buildings account for 40% of global energy use, making them central to achieving climate neutrality goals. In this context, energy flexibility emerges as a key enabler, particularly when combined with the Plus Energy Building (PEB) concept—buildings that generate more renewable energy than they consume annually.

A new scientific publication by Eurac Research for the Journal Sustainable Energy, Grids and Networks addresses this challenge through an innovative model predictive control approach for battery management systems.

The study, titled "An Advanced Predictive Battery Control Strategy for Plus Energy Building Flexibility," explores how buildings as energy systems can offer demand-side flexibility by responding to external signals such as electricity prices, CO2 emissions, or grid congestion. This capability allows system operators to dynamically influence consumption patterns, supporting grid stability and renewable energy integration.

The research, developed within the European research project Cultural-e, stands out for its comprehensive methodology, combining large-scale simulation analysis with practical laboratory implementation. Eurac Research conducted year-long simulations across different scenarios, combining a reference building archetype with various representative European geoclusters and electrical consumption patterns from tailored thermal asset controls.

"Our team designed and implemented this laboratory experimental setup within Eurac Research facilities, monitoring its performance over a full year. The setup successfully demonstrated the system's ability to shift battery-stored energy toward high-priced periods, with non-standard induced inverter operations observed 10% of the time—highlighting the system's responsiveness under real-world conditions" explains Enrico Dalla Maria, first author of the study.

"Our Institute played a central role in this research, developing the predictive battery control strategy architecture and implementing the complete modeling and analysis workflow. The team ran the extensive simulation campaign to quantify energy shifting and flexibility performance indicators, while also designing the laboratory test procedures and addressing important methodological challenges." continues Dalla Maria.

The laboratory infrastructure PV Integration Lab not only validates the simulation results but also expands our capabilities in testing advanced control systems on physical hardware. The experimental data collected will support ongoing refinement of our models, contributing to the development of more effective energy management solutions that can help buildings play an active role in the energy transition.

The combination of simulation-based assessment across European contexts and hands-on laboratory testing positions this work as a significant contribution toward achieving climate neutrality through intelligent building energy management.