Estimation of Energy Activity and Flexibility Range in Smart Active Residential Building

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper presents a study about the energy consumption-generation-storage profiles in a smart active residential building. The main aspect to highlight is how authors have articulated the introduction to the state-of-the-art preserving an interdisciplinary point of view.

In discussion the sentence "which can be neglected in this study, can be easily overcome by applying little extra calculation at a certain time expense" is very imprecise. Please show details about simulations, "software", "time consumption", etc. 

Some additional comments:

Figures have unknown symbols. A reference supporting fundamentals in section 2.1.5. is missed. Please use the SI units along the document. In the flowchart of Figure. 6, please explain more precisely in which consist the process "battery discharge", "import (from grid)", "charge battery" and export(to grid).

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I have reviewed the manuscript "Estimation of Energy Activity and Flexibility Range in Smart Active Residential Building", Manuscript ID: smartcities-631327. In this paper, the authors develop an energy flow model of a domestic dwelling consisting of photovoltaic array, individual on-site wind turbine, battery storage, a heat pump in combination with hot water storage tank. The authors simulate three different scenarios of the battery, three scenarios of the hot water storage tank, as well as two scenarios of the demand response application. The paper assesses the flexibility for each scenario, the results being summarized and compared in detail. The reviewed paper is interesting, documented and generally well structured. However, I consider that the article will benefit if the authors take into account the following remarks and address within the manuscript the signaled issues:

Lines 9-27, the Abstract of the manuscript. I consider that the authors should structure the Abstract as to cover the most important points of interest: the authors should have positioned the manuscript’s topic in a broad context therefore covering appropriately the topic’s background; the authors should have presented succinctly the methods they have employed in order to attain the purpose of their study; the authors should have summarized the most important outcomes of their study and the conclusion that one could draw. I consider that the abstract of the manuscript under review will be improved if the authors state and explain concisely at the end of the abstract the clear contribution that their study has brought to the current state of knowledge. In the abstract, the authors must state more clearly their purpose, their methods, their original results and conclusions, the novelty of their study. In addition to this, at Line 24 the authors state: "…peak loads shifted per annum, the COP of the HP on an annual bases, etc." In a scientific paper one should avoid using run-on expressions, such as "and so forth", "and so on" or "etc.". Therefore, instead of "etc.", the sentence should mention all the elements that are relevant to the manuscript. The "Materials and Methods" section. When presenting the devised method in the "Materials and Methods" section, it will be extremely helpful to design and insert a diagram depicting the main sequence of steps that one has to process in order to reproduce the results of the conducted study. This diagram should be analyzed in detail within the manuscript by specifying all the elements needed for each and every step, in order to reach the final result of the study. Issues regarding the datasets. In what concerns the datasets, the authors state in section 2.1 that they have used for the household’s thermal and for electrical load profile, "historically measured data obtained from 25 buildings" (Lines 190, 210), while for the weather data "The historically measured solar irradiance, wind speed, and air temperature data are obtained from the weather forecasting station based at Aalborg University laboratory." (Lines 225-226). First of all, all data must be anchored in time by specifying the time intervals to which the data refer to, otherwise the whole study risks to become inconsistent and irrelevant. Secondly, even if all the involved datasets refer to a one-year period, in order to provide a correct study and relevant results, all the datasets must refer to the same period of time, namely the same year. Thirdly, the authors must provide more details regarding the way in which they intend to solve the problems related to missing data or abnormal values if they are to occur. The "Discussion" section. In order to validate the usefulness of their research, in the "Discussion" section, the authors should make a comparison between their study from the manuscript and other ones that have been developed and used in the literature for similar or related purposes. The paper will benefit if the authors make a step further, beyond their approach and provide an insight at the end of the "Discussion" section regarding what they consider to be, based on the obtained results, the most important steps that all the involved parties should take in order to benefit from the results of the research conducted within the manuscript. The notations within the paper. The authors must pay more attention to the significance of the notations. It will benefit the paper if the authors add a "Nomenclature" section at the end of the paper, within which they should explain the notations and abbreviations used within the paper.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx