Flexibility Control in Autonomous Demand Response by Optimal Power Tracking

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1. The authors should follow this order for their revised abstract: (1) Novelty (2) Methods (3) Results (4) conclusion. Results are more important, and the authors need to provide the most critical outcomes here. Please revise the abstract accordingly. Also, avoid general sentences here.
2. The last part of the introduction should conclude the limitations of the previous studies and provide the main objectives and novelties of this study. The authors need to clearly address the knowledge gap and provide some meaningful phrases that their study can advance the knowledge and fill in a knowledge gap that has not been considered yet.
3. Please provide some information about the computational cost of the model implementation (CPU time, number of variables, etc.).
4. The results section should be significantly enhanced providing a critical discussion of the model outputs.
5. The conclusions section is missing. The authors should follow this structure: 1. A brief description of what have you done and what is your novelty? 2. How did you investigate the system and what are the main useful parameters? 3. Provide the primary results as the bullet points? 4. State the main limitations of this study and present some suggestions for future researches.
6. The literature review is one of the main parts of a scientific paper to show your novelty, and alert the readers that you are aware of the performed research studies. The following works might be useful:
   • Cai, J., Optimal Building Thermal Load Scheduling for Simultaneous Participation in Energy and Frequency Regulation Markets. Energies 2021, 14, (6), 1593.
   • Hadri, M.; Trovato, V.; Bialecki, A.; Merk, B.; Peakman, A., Assessment of High-Electrification UK Scenarios with Varying Levels of Nuclear Power and Associated Post-Fault Behaviour. Energies 2021, 14, (6), 1780.
   • Koltsaklis, N.; Panapakidis, I. P.; Pozo, D.; Christoforidis, G. C., A Prosumer Model Based on Smart Home Energy Management and Forecasting Techniques. Energies 2021, 14, (6), 1724.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper compares power tracking signals with real time pricing signals as concerns the flexibility control in autonomous demand response. As case study, German renewable energy production and German standard load profiles are used for daily production and demand profiles, respectively. The outcomes show that the power tracking control provides significant benefits with regards to peak consumption, storage variation, and storage losses. The topic is cutting-edge given the huge importance of building flexibility optimization to promote the energy transition of the building stock. The paper is well-written and provides interesting insights. My detailed comments are reported below.

1. The originality and novel contributions of the paper compared to previous studies should be discussed and demonstrated.
2. The optimization of the hourly values of pseudo-prices would be very interesting.
3. Line 140: “Dt = 1”. The measurement unit should be added (h?).
4. The framework can be enhanced to consider – as design variable – occupant behavior too, without compromising comfort. This is crucial in my opinion to maximize building flexibility. A discussion should be added in this regard.
5. The authors assume known data about energy loads. However, in real applications, such data should be predicted and this represents a critical and crucial point. A discussion should be added in this regard.
6. The authors should detail how the proposed approach can be implemented in real applications, as concerns both hardware and software.
7. The framework can be coupled with model predictive control strategies to take into account weather forecasts, which affect electricity loads. This can be an interesting future development.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors have successfully addressed all the points of my list. Therefore, I recommend the acceptance of the manuscript.