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FlexAssist is a recommender engine that helps commercial building owners and operators of office and retail building types effectively participate in demand response (DR) programs.
Given a set of contextual conditions forecasted for DR events on a day-ahead basis and owner/operator valuations of building services, FlexAssist determines which in a set of candidate building control strategies is likely to strike the best balance between the economic benefits of DR event participation and the risk of building service losses.
FlexAssist addresses the need to provide building operators with decision-support resources as utilities seek to expand commerical DR programs and leverage greater flexibility in energy demand to help integrate variable renewable energy supply and improve the resilience of the electric grid. Expanded DR programs offer increasing opportunities for smaller commercial buildings to participate in DR - e.g., through the services of load aggregators – yet, such buildings often lack the resources needed to assess the benefits and risks of responding to frequent DR event calls from the grid.
FlexAssist fills this gap by automating the process of conducting a benefit-risk assessment in advance of an event and determining how best to respond, and by learning from information collected during each event to continually improve the underlying prediction framework.
Documentation for FlexAssist is available online. The documentation includes an overview of the software, instructions for setting up a computer to run FlexAssist, and guidance on particular code execution modes.
If you find any errors in the model or opportunities for improvement, contribute to the issue tracker.