NASEO’s new report, Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings: State Briefing Paper, describes how grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) can benefit the grid and building owners and occupants. New technologies that enable flexible load management open opportunities for buildings to reduce energy system stresses and provide grid services that can lower costs, reduce emissions, and improve energy resilience. They can also advance the integration of variable and distributed energy resources into our energy systems.
While GEBs offer large potential benefits, they also encounter hindrances and uncertainties. The report outlines technical characteristics, challenges, and opportunities as well as policy, regulatory, and administrative drivers and impediments. It concludes with discussion of actions that states and localities can take to advance GEBs and use of load flexibility. It recommends that states develop “roadmaps” to chart forward steps that states can take based on their own priorities and contexts.
The report was developed with the support of the U.S. Department of Energy, Building Technologies Office and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as part of the NASEO-NARUC Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings Working Group, a partnership of NASEO and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) to advance GEB understanding and opportunities among the states.