From Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) to demonstrating demand response in blocks of buildings. Upgrading technical and social systems

Electricity networks base their stability on the balance between electricity usage and generation. Unbalance in the electricity network results in blackouts and can escalate to systems disruption at national and multinational level.
The National grids, Transmission Network Operators (TNOs) and Distribution Network Operators (DSOs) ensure the electricity grid remains within safe operational threshold. Demand Response (DR) is a series of the mechanisms intended to procure that the electricity grid stays stable when a peak demand period is forecast. A demand response action aims at alleviating grid stress or constraints making use of the flexibility that some users have on their electricity use at specific periods. This flexibility is agreed through contracts between companies acting as aggregators and the National grid in the case of the UK for the current DR programs. These aggregators need to acquire flexibility from the qualified users (industry and large energy consumers mainly) in order to be able to manage the assets at disposal to response to the grid’s requests to increase or the reduce energy consumption or generation. The Demand Response as a means to balancing electricity grid stress over peak demand periods has long been a matter of research.
Currently DR is largely the reserve of large industrial consumers. It is now widely agreed that DR must become more attractive to smaller energy consumers enabling the aggregation of the energy assets of those customers to increase the amount of flexibility available for DR.
This paper presents a detailed discussion of a pilot at a UK University campus of a DR energy management solution developed as part of the DR BoB EU project. This paper also highlights the need for complex social interactions within buildings to be integrated with the technical upgrades when implementing DR solutions.