Gateway Cities Unplugged: (em)Powering Affordable Housing

This project aims to identify and evaluate GEB improvements that will transform existing affordable and mixed-income multifamily housing communities into grid assets. A key goal of this project is to demonstrate financeable pathways for existing affordable multi-family housing to transition to GEBs by streamlining GEB design and researching saving and revenue opportunities. GEB solutions are expected to automate load flexibility with the development and/or enhancement of cloud-based, smart meter, and/or Internet of Things (IoT) platforms that integrate energy storage, solar PV, building automation, and other connected device controls. Additionally, the demonstration projects will explore new approaches to valuing “Resiliency as a Service” for vulnerable communities in order to optimize the design and financing of on-site battery storage that provide 24-hour backup of targeted loads.

Prospective Building
Prospective Building
Overview of Six Multi-Family Communities
Overview of Six Multi-Family Communities
System Architecture of Project
System Architecture of Project
Project Lead
Open Market ESCO
Planned Location of Buildings
Six multi-family apartment communities in MA, CT, and NY
Partners

Fraunhofer USA, Inc.
Dynamic Grid
Elevated Design
Sparhawk Group

Building types
Six mixed-income apartment communities representing approximately 1,000 multi-family homes.
New or retrofit buildings
Retrofit
Energy Efficiency Target
30% reduction. Two of the six properties were recently renovated with several EE measures, including new insulation (exterior walls and/or roof), windows, heating and cooling systems, LED lighting, and ventilation systems. Two other properties have planned deep energy retrofits, including new continuous insulation, triple pane windows, energy recovery ventilation, and heat pump upgrades. However, these deep energy retrofit improvements are independent and separate from the DOE Project. This project will consider the impact of EE measures for all six properties, including measures such as air sealing, variable frequency drives where not already existing, ECM pumps where not already existing, exterior envelope thermal performance, etc. GEB measures such as smart thermostats and building management system (BMS) are planned for the Project's demonstration property.
Total load
N/A
DERs planned
Design and/or construct 175-200 kW of solar PV, 500-1000 kWh battery energy storage system (BESS) as well as six (6) new EV Charging Stations and approximately 744 new smart thermostats with the capacity to deliver up to 500 kW of Peak (30-min) load flexibility or 175 kW of 4-hour load flexibility.
Flexible Loads
The bulk of the demonstration project’s dispatchable load will come from behind-the-meter energy storage and from shifting thermostatic loads, with additional smaller contributions from shedding point loads. These resource classes are a good fit for participation in various regional capacity markets administered by the Electric Distribution Company (EDC), the ISO, or the state.
Grid services planned
The grid services that this project will target in its GEB designs include load shaping to mitigate PV intermittency, increased PV hosting capacity, participation in ISO-NE forward capacity and day-ahead markets, utility DR programs, and peak shaving for retail bill reduction. These services will be managed through a supervisory controller.
Affordable Housing
This project is focused on low and moderate income multifamily rental housing residents who experience disproportionately high energy burdens. This project must therefore innovate to reduce first costs and maximize savings opportunities for buildings with relatively small energy loads. Both battery storage and EV charging are not widely deployed in multi-family housing and this project plans to include both at its demonstration site.
Resilience
Resiliency will be evaluated at all six properties and aims to understand the impact resiliency has on design and first cost. Building resiliency will be designed at the building scale with some combination of battery energy storage, on-site solar PV, load management, and/or existing or new generators. GEB designs will consider a supervisory controller capable of operating battery storage and solar PV during grid outages in order to meet some portion of building load. The operation of solar and BESS during a grid outage must be approved by the utility operator.
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