Eunsung Oh

Commercial building demand response can support sustainable grid operation by providing demand-side flexibility for renewable-rich power systems; however, baseline-based measurement and verification usually report only event-period gross load reduction. Post-event rebound from heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, and lighting controls can cause gross-only reporting, resulting in overstating the net reduction at the building–grid interface. Standard baseline estimators have not been systematically evaluated in the post-event window. This study formulates a rebound-aware net-reduction accounting framework that reports the event-period gross reduction, post-event rebound, and rebound-adjusted net effect under the same eligible-day baseline structure. The framework was evaluated on the paired ComStock 2025 Release 2 Actual Meteorological Year 2018 profiles for commercial buildings in California, Texas, and New York with five baseline estimators and three rebound-window definitions. In a balanced 3960-building sample, the median true gross reduction was 62.7 kWh and the 2 h rebound was 5.49 kWh. The pooled median post-minus-event mean absolute error was −0.209 kWh per 15 min interval. The material gross-as-net reporting risk affected 70.9% of building-event-method cases, but rebound-aware net reporting was conditionally valuable rather than uniformly superior. These results show that rebound diagnostics can improve transparent and auditable demand response reporting for sustainable grid-interactive building programs.

This study presents a virtual energy storage system (VESS) scheduling method that strategically integrates fixed and dynamic energy storage (ES) solutions to optimize energy management in commercial buildings. Fixed ES, such as batteries, provides stable flexibility but is expensive and can be inefficiently operated. In contrast, dynamic ES can be utilized as needed but requires validation of their flexibility. By combining fixed ES with dynamic ES utilizing vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capabilities, this approach enhances grid stability and manages energy costs more effectively. Empirical validation using real-world data from Korea demonstrates significant improvements in total net benefits by reducing energy costs, which are crucial for the economic sustainability of commercial energy use. Additionally, the analysis of Pearson’s linear correlation coefficient with demand identifies where benefits occur in the scheduling process. The integrated system reduces the need for costly upgrades to the utility grid, suggesting a strategic advantage for large-scale adoption. This study establishes a framework for the broader implementation of such integrated systems, highlighting the potential for substantial improvements in energy efficiency, reduced carbon emissions, and enhanced grid reliability.

This paper addresses the challenge of accurately forecasting solar power generation (SPG) across multiple sites using a single common model. The proposed deep learning-based model is designed to predict SPG for various locations by leveraging a comprehensive dataset from multiple sites in the Republic of Korea. By incorporating common meteorological elements such as temperature, humidity, and cloud cover into its framework, the model uniquely identifies site-specific features to enhance the forecasting accuracy. The key innovation of this model is the integration of a classifier module within the common model framework, enabling it to adapt and predict SPG for both known and unknown sites based on site similarities. This approach allows for the extraction and utilization of site-specific characteristics from shared meteorological data, significantly improving the model’s adaptability and generalization across diverse environmental conditions. The evaluation results demonstrate that the model maintains high performance levels across different SPG sites with minimal performance degradation compared to site-specific models. Notably, the model shows robust forecasting capabilities, even in the absence of target SPG data, highlighting its potential to enhance operational efficiency and support the integration of renewable energy into the power grid, thereby contributing to the global transition towards sustainable energy sources.

This study proposes a deep-reinforcement-learning (DRL)-based vehicle-to-grid (V2G) operation strategy that focuses on the dynamic integration of charging station (CS) status to refine solar power generation (SPG) forecasts. To address the variability in solar energy and CS status, this study proposes a novel approach by formulating the V2G operation as a Markov decision process and leveraging DRL to adaptively manage SPG forecast errors. Utilizing real-world data from the Korea Southern Power Corporation, the effectiveness of this strategy in enhancing SPG forecasts is proven using the PyTorch framework. The results demonstrate a significant reduction in the mean squared error by 40% to 56% compared to scenarios without V2G. Our investigation into the effects of blocking probability thresholds and discount factors revealed insights into the optimal V2G system performance, suggesting a balance between immediate operational needs and long-term strategic objectives. The findings highlight the possibility of using DRL-based strategies to achieve more reliable and efficient renewable energy integration in power grids, marking a significant step forward in smart grid optimization.

With the widespread use of electric vehicles (EVs), the potential to utilize them as flexible resources has increased. However, the existing vehicle-to-grid (V2G) studies have focused on V2G operation methods. The operational performance is limited by the amount of availability resources, which represents the flexibility. This study proposes a data-driven modeling method to estimate the V2G flexibility. A charging station is a control point connected to a power grid for V2G operation. Therefore, the charging stations’ statuses were analyzed by applying the basic queuing model with a dataset of 1008 chargers (785 AC chargers and 223 DC chargers) from 500 charging stations recorded in Korea. The basic queuing model obtained the long-term average status values of the stations over the entire time period. To estimate the V2G flexibility over time, a charging station status modeling method was proposed within a time interval. In the proposed method, the arrival rate and service time were modified according to the time interval, and the station status was expressed in a propagated form that considered the current and previous time slots. The simulation results showed that the proposed method effectively estimated the actual value within a 10% mean absolute percentage error. Moreover, the determination of V2G flexibility based on the charging station status is discussed herein. According to the results, the charging station status in the next time slot, as well as that in the current time slot, is affected by the V2G. Therefore, to estimate the V2G flexibility, the propagation effect must be considered.

This study proposes a community solar operation strategy for smart energy communities (SECs), which comprise members of an energy consumption group, to minimize the electricity bill of its members. When sharing resources within a group, resource distribution is a critical problem, and fairness in resource sharing is the main constraint for operation. The proposed community solar operation is formulated as a mixed-integer liner problem that can be optimally solved using centralized control and future time information. However, obtaining information of a future time is not causal. By decomposing the problem into individual problems that are solved by each member at each decision time, the proposed strategy operates the community solar in a distributed manner with partial information. The simulation results using the real dataset recorded in Korea show that the use of the proposed operation strategy results in a fair distribution of electricity bill savings with a marginal benefit reduction of 10% compared to the optimal operation that requires a centralized control and information on the future time. Moreover, a discussion on the tradeoff between the benefits of electricity bill savings and guarantee of fairness is provided. Based on the results, this study can serve as a reference for the design of community solar operations for SECs.

A virtual energy storage system (VESS) logically shares a physical energy storage system among multiple units. In resource sharing, the distribution of benefits is a critical problem. As a resolution, this study proposes a fair VESS operation method for smart energy communities that involve groups of energy consumption units. First, the cost and resource fairness indices are defined as the benefit and VESS usage proportional to the investment cost, respectively. The fair VESS operation problem is formulated considering the fairness indices that could be solved optimally by applying gradient methods without additional computational burden. The simulation results using the dataset in Korea demonstrate that the proposed operation allows the fair distribution of the benefit and resource usage among units with a marginal benefit reduction of approximately 5% in relation to the VESS operation to maximize the benefit. Moreover, it is shown that the resource fairness that controls the VESS usage limits the total benefit, and the cost fairness distributes the benefit among units according to the cost contribution. Furthermore, the proposed VESS operation can manage the VESS lifetime and improve the system performance of the utility grid.

The concept of a virtual energy storage system (VESS) is based on the sharing of a large energy storage system by multiple units; however, the capacity allocation for each unit limits the operation performance of the VESS. This study proposes an operation strategy of a dynamic VESS for smart energy communities. The proposed VESS operation strategy considers the usage-limited constraint rather than the capacity allocation constraint and it guarantees the usage of VESS resources of each participant for an operation period. Therefore, the degrees of freedom for VESS operation can be increased at each operation time. The dynamic VESS operation problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear problem that could be solved optimally by applying gradient methods and dual decomposition. The dataset of a VESS in Korea is used for simulation. The simulation results demonstrate that, when the proposed operation strategy is used, the cost efficiency achieved is more than twice that achieved when the existing VESS operation strategy is used. Furthermore, the proposed strategy accurately reflects the characteristics of the participants; thus, more units can participate in the VESS operation service. The proposed VESS operation can improve the system performance of the utility grid and increase the net benefit of the participants.

Digital technologies, especially information and communication technologies, paved the way for social welfare by providing efficient and effective means for services. In the energy sector, advanced metering infrastructures (AMIs) are essential for providing various services through information measurement. In this article, we focus on the deployment of an AMI in multi-dwelling units where automated meter reading (AMR) infrastructures are installed. In particular, we explore whether the AMR should substitute the AMI with few alterations, while ensuring desirable accuracy. To determine the adequacy of technology, information measurement performance, service performance, and implementation cost are used as the indicators. Through a case study using real data recorded in Korea, we quantitatively estimate that AMR-based information measurement can exhibit adequate performance and performance degradation of less than 1% in a service environment utilizing AMI with a low-cost investment. We also discuss several technologies and implementation issues in the upcycling of AMR for more reliable service. This study provides a guide for when configuring an information measurement system for a new energy service.

This paper focuses on a virtual power plant (VPP) implementation strategy for smart local energy communities (SECs) with energy service providers. It is difficult to balance energy in the implementation stage due to uncertainties in demand and resources. Therefore, VPP implementation was modeled using the risk factor of energy balance. Using this risk factor, it was shown that the temporal correlation between demand and resources was the dominant factor involved in VPP implementation. Based on this, two risk-based VPP implementation strategies are proposed: an optimization-based strategy and a simple strategy that is solved in an iterative way. To minimize VPP implementation costs, the proposed strategies select the resources that have high correlation coefficients with demand and low correlation coefficients with other resources. Experimental results using real data sets show that the proposed strategies based on the risk factor are effective means of VPP implementation for commercial and residential SECs. The results imply that VPPs for commercial SECs are possible when PV is used as the main resource and is supplemented by wind, and it is effective to configure VPPs for residential SECs using wind according to the correlation between demand and resources.