Conference Program

Professor Shengwei Wang, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Rise 

Potentials, Challenges and Technologies for Energy Flexibility Provision of Buildings and Data Centres in High-renewable Power Grids 

In high-density cities, like Hong Kong and other major cities, it is hard to achieve carbon neutrality within buildings, the cities or data centres by adopting renewables. Beside reducing their energy demands via enhancing energy efficiency, a major contribution of buildings is to use their energy flexibility to respond to the needs of power grids effectively and timely, to facilitate high global renewable penetration and carbon-neutrality at grid level. However, what are the potentials of buildings and data centres in terms of flexibility capacity, response time and the impacts of their flexibility provisions their operational reliability and user satisfaction as well as the economic effectiveness of flexibility provision are not yet clear. The main challenges and effective technical solutions need to be properly addressed before the wide practical engagement of building and data centre energy flexibilities. This presentation attempts to provide some insights to these critical issues, concerning passive and active flexibility resources in buildings as well as computing workloads and battery/backup systems as flexibility resources in data centres. The technologies for flexibility quantification and enhancement as well as grid-interactive control and management of flexibility resources in buildings and data centres will be discussed.   

Biography

As an active scientist on smart building energy technologies, Professor Wang focusses his research on system optimal control and system optimization of air-conditioning and energy systems, energy flexibility and grid-interactive management technologies for buildings and energy systems at demand side as well as smart building technologies. He has secured over 60 research grants, including a collaborative research grant (CRF) and over 20 General Research Fund (GRF) from Hong Kong Research Grant Council (RGC), and an overseas outstanding youth talent grant from NSFC. Professor Wang ranked as one of the top 200 impactful scholars in “Energy” field in 2022 and 2023, and ranked No. 20 and No. 22 in “Building and Construction” field in 2021 and 2020 in a Stanford report.  

Professor Wang is also very active and successful in industrial collaborative research and applications. He has obtained over HK 30M industrial fund and has extensive experiences in energy system optimisation and enhancement of both new buildings and existing commercial/industrial buildings, achieved over 10 million kWh saving per year per building and up to 42%.

Dr Stephen White

Enabling Digital Intelligence for Grid Integrated Control of Buildings

The International Energy Agency’s ‘Data-Driven Smart Buildings’ initiative (Annex 81) explored the use of digitalisation as an enabling tool for improving energy performance in non-residential buildings.  The Annex focused on both (i) data analytics and AI software applications (for improving energy productivity) and (ii) the digital infrastructure that underpins these applications.  

IEA-EBC Annex 96 ‘Grid Integrated Control of Buildings’ drills further into the task of connecting buildings and orchestrating them - as an aggregate DER resource - in a way that supports future grids with large amounts of variable renewable energy generation.

This presentation will discuss some of the findings from these Annexes, including suggested pathways for unlocking intelligent buildings as grid aware resources. 

Biography: Stephen White

Dr White leads the Energy Efficiency Research at CSIRO. He has over 25 years experience in energy end use efficiency and electricity industry demand side management.  He was the Operating Agent for the International Energy Agency EBC Annex 81 “Data-Driven Smart Buildings” and now co-leads Annex 96 “Grid Integrated Control of Buildings”.  He has oversight over key national energy-use datasets and leads the “Data Clearing House” digital platform initiative. He has played a leadership role in the start-up of several companies, and the design of award-winning HVAC systems. He is a member of the Australian Refrigeration and Building Services “Hall of Fame”, and winner of AIRAH’s James Harrison lifetime achievement award.