Cost-Effective Heating Control Approaches by Demand Response and Peak Demand Limiting in an Educational Office Building with District Heating

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

In this paper, the authors investigated several approaches to reduce the heating cost of energy for buildings. The authors mentioned a gap in research concerning the decentralized DR, centralized DR, and peak demand limiting in district-heated buildings. They examined three cost-effective heating control visions, including a) the decentralized DR control, b) centralized DR control, and c) limiting peak demand while maintaining indoor air thermal comfort. The authors considered several approaches and examined each approach in a section. Several software was also used for the sake of comparison. While many details report about different aspects of the building and model, many essential data are also missing. So, the reader is unsure how to interpret and use the report. Thus, the manuscript’s clarity regarding the provided data is questionable and should be corrected. Due to the same reason, the soundness of conclusions and physical model is also hard to judge. Generally, the quality and structure of the study are acceptable, and the paper is clear and straightforward. Thus, there are only a few minor comments that authors should address before publication:

1- The contribution of the study in the last paragraph of the introduction is a bit confusing. A better rewrite would help. I suggest a small summary for each gap before the last paragraph would help.

2- Many weather data and several sources were used for a comprehensive comparison. The data could be beneficial to future researchers if they publish the data in a free repertory and link them to the manuscript. This way, other authors can directly use the unified data of the present study for their research and cite the manuscript and dataset. 

3- It would be best if the author included the building model and data in such a dataset.

4- The building details, such as the size of rooms, height, and material, are unclear. More details would help so the results would be reproducible. Providing the building model or its text file as a supplementary file could solve this issue. 

5- In “lines 207-2011” two temperature ranges were mentioned. Please clarify which one and how it was used.

6- One of the concerns in this study is the validation of the models. Authors should provide specific validation to show that their code and analysis work correctly. So, an exact comparison with one of the literary works is of interest. 

7- Line 191, please check the text for a potential typo.

8- For lines 202-205, the approach was mentioned for price calculation, but there are many uncertainties for a reader about how much prices change or what shape they could have. Please report your computations for the prices which were used in the present manuscript. Provide graphs or tables. They can be placed in supplementary material or a free respiratory. The same issue can be seen in other sections. While many detailed reports about different aspects of the building and model are in the manuscript, many essential data are also missing. So, the reader is not sure how to physically understand and use the report.

9-The data about windows and materials are not complete.

10- Why in Fig. 9 is there a concave behavior for Tnorm 80% but an opposite trend for Reference and T norm 10%? The physical reasons should be discussed. 

Author Response

Paper ID: buildings-2187660

Response to Reviewer 1 Comments

We thank you very much for your constructive suggestions and precious comments concerning our manuscript entitled “Towards cost-effective heating control approaches by demand response and peak demand limiting in an educational office building with district heating”. These comments are all valuable and very helpful for revising and improving our paper. We have studied comments carefully and have made corrections in our paper highlighted in blue, which we hope meet with your approval.

The responses to your comments are as follows:

Point 1: In this paper, the authors investigated several approaches to reduce the heating cost of energy for buildings. The authors mentioned a gap in research concerning the decentralized DR, centralized DR, and peak demand limiting in district-heated buildings. They examined three cost-effective heating control visions, including a) the decentralized DR control, b) centralized DR control, and c) limiting peak demand while maintaining indoor air thermal comfort. The authors considered several approaches and examined each approach in a section. Several software was also used for the sake of comparison. While many details report about different aspects of the building and model, many essential data are also missing. So, the reader is unsure how to interpret and use the report. Thus, the manuscript’s clarity regarding the provided data is questionable and should be corrected. Due to the same reason, the soundness of conclusions and physical model is also hard to judge. Generally, the quality and structure of the study are acceptable, and the paper is clear and straightforward. Thus, there are only a few minor comments that authors should address before publication

Response: Thank you for your time and useful comments. I will revise it point-to-point, and use blue highlights for revisions in the updated manuscript.

Point 2: The contribution of the study in the last paragraph of the introduction is a bit confusing. A better rewrite would help. I suggest a small summary for each gap before the last paragraph would help.

Response: Thank you for the useful comment, and we did find the sentense is a little bit confusing. We have revised the last sentence of the intribution according to your comment. Pages 2, Lines 91-93.

Point 3: Many weather data and several sources were used for a comprehensive comparison. The data could be beneficial to future researchers if they publish the data in a free repertory and link them to the manuscript. This way, other authors can directly use the unified data of the present study for their research and cite the manuscript and dataset

Response: Yes, we totally agree with you that the data could be beneficial to future researchers if they publish the data in a free repertory and link them to the manuscript. For our manuscript, we adopted the weather data from the Finnish Test Reference Year 2 (TRY) [23]. We used this weather data as an example for other researchers to do further studies.

23. Kalamees, T.; Jylhä, K.; Tietäväinen, H., Jokisalo, J.; Ilomets, S.; Hyvönen, R. Development of weighting factors for climate variables for selecting the energy reference year according to the EN ISO 15927-4 standard. Energy and Buildings, 2012, 47, 53–60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2011.11.031.

Point 4: It would be best if the author included the building model and data in such a dataset.

Response: Thanks for your comment. We agree with you that sharing building model and data to the public will contribute to more positive things. But unfortunlty, we don’t have the right to share. Sorry for it.

Point 5: The building details, such as the size of rooms, height, and material, are unclear. More details would help so the results would be reproducible. Providing the building model or its text file as a supplementary file could solve this issue.

Response: Thanks for the useful comments, and we have added some description of the building according to your comments. Page 5 Line 163. One thing we should mention, we put more efforts on describing the control methods instead of the basic building description because our focus is to compare different control methods on the studied building. And the studied building is just a application objectm and the importance is the control algorithms. Thus, we didn’t give too detiled information about the building.

Point 6: In “lines 207-2011” two temperature ranges were mentioned. Please clarify which one and how it was used.

Response: Thank you for the comment. We didn’t describe it well. Actually, we want to say that the the acceptable room air temperatures should meet these two different standards, and combies these two standards, we can decide the appropriate acceptable room air temperature range. Briefly, the acceptable room air temperatures should be designed to meet both standards. Sorry for the misleading description.

Point 7: One of the concerns in this study is the validation of the models. Authors should provide specific validation to show that their code and analysis work correctly. So, an exact comparison with one of the literary works is of interest.

Response: Thank you for the useful remind and comment. The models have been validated by Vand et al. [35] as we share the models but different control approaches and algorithm. Thus, there is no doubt that models are validated. We also mentioned this point in Page 10, Lines 293-295.

Point 8: Line 191, please check the text for a potential typo.

Response: We have revised the sentence according to your comments. Page 6, Lines 190-191.

Point 9: For lines 202-205, the approach was mentioned for price calculation, but there are many uncertainties for a reader about how much prices change or what shape they could have. Please report your computations for the prices which were used in the present manuscript. Provide graphs or tables. They can be placed in supplementary material or a free respiratory. The same issue can be seen in other sections. While many detailed reports about different aspects of the building and model are in the manuscript, many essential data are also missing. So, the reader is not sure how to physically understand and use the report..

Response: Thanks for your comments. As you can see that we mentioned that the used method to determine the price trend was presented by Alimohammadisagvand et al. [39] and applied for this study, as well. Thus, the detailed prices change and shape can befound in their study. We just used their calculation method, and I have mentioned it in our manuscript. I think if readers are curious about the calculation method, they can directly find it from the following reference Section 4.1. Momentary rule-based DR control algorithm (Momentary control algorithm) and Section 4.2. redictive rule-based DR control algorithms.

39. Alimohammadisagvand, B.; Jokisalo, J.; Sirén, K. Comparison of four rule-based demand response control algorithms in an electrically and heat pump-heated residential building. Applied Energy, 2018, 209, 167–79. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.10.088.

Point 10: The data about windows and materials are not complete..

Response: Thanks for the useful comments, personally we think in our article, we should put more efforts on describing the control methods instead of the basic building description because our focus is to compare different control methods on the studied building. And the studied building is just a application objectm and the importance is the control algorithms. Thus, we didn’t give too detiled information about the building. However, we did provid the window related parameters, which are highlighted as blue in Page 6, Lines 168-172.

Point 11: Why in Fig. 9 is there a concave behavior for Tnorm 80% but an opposite trend for Reference and T norm 10%? The physical reasons should be discussed.

Response: It is a very nice question, and we appreciate it. We think that is caused by reducing the the maximum inlet water temperature too much (80%), and thus bigger mass flow rate is required to meet the acceptable indoor air temperature. And for the rest of them, the the maximum inlet water temperature reductions are less than or equal to 50%.

In the end, we really appreciate it that our paper is rated well by you, and hope that our responses and the revised version could meet with your approval.

Reviewer 2 Report

 After evaluating the introduction of this paper, I can conclude that the authors have identified a gap in research regarding the comparison between decentralized DR, centralized DR, and peak demand limiting approaches in district-heated buildings. In particular, the study aims to compare these approaches with dynamic energy prices for a large educational office building. The authors also highlight the novelty of their approach and propose three cost-effective heating control visions. After evaluating this paper, I can conclude that the study successfully demonstrates that the decentralized and centralized DR control approaches can reduce the heating energy cost while maintaining acceptable thermal comfort. Furthermore, the peak demand limiting approach was able to provide the greatest cost savings of up to 35%. The results and conclusions depend heavily on dynamic energy pricing, power charges set by the DH producer, and climatic conditions, so they may not be applicable across other settings. Lastly, further research should consider additional controls to enhance performance. The paper could be improved by considering additional controls to enhance the performance of the decentralized and centralized DR control approaches. Additionally, the authors could consider exploring other settings to determine the generalizability of their results and conclusions.

Author Response

Thank you so much for your time and efforts on our manuscript. I will follow your recommendations for future study. Thanks again.