EXPLORATION OF BUILDING CLUSTERING POTENTIAL WITH ENERGY STORAGE IN NEW YORK CITY

The adoption of distributed energy resources has increased in recent years due to decreasing implementation costs and increasing regulatory incentives to reduce energy consumption. This trend has been driven by a surge in energy consciousness and the availability of energy-saving products and technologies. Many energy consumers are also electing to use battery systems to store energy locally, further reducing reliance on the electrical grid and maximizing the benefits of distributed energy systems. For owners of multiple buildings, or multiple owners willing to share the operational cost, building clusters may be formed to more effectively take advantage of these distributed resources and storage systems. However, determining what makes a "good" building cluster when implementing these systems in existing buildings is a challenge. Additional challenges are presented when geographical proximity of these buildings is considered. Using metrics derived from comparison of unique five-building clusters from a population of sixteen stock buildings with a given distributed energy resource (in this case, a solar photovoltaic panel array) and energy storage system, we apply performance ranking information to a population of actual building data from New York City. In doing so, the authors aim to build upon the concept of logical building clusters with consideration of physical building location to develop an understanding of which geographic areas present the greatest opportunity for clustering.