Urban Green: Grid Ready
Our team created an hourly resolution urban-scale energy model for the entire existing building stock of New York City.
We first characterized the buildings into 27 typologies and calibrated building-level energy models to measure monthly energy use for each of those typologies. We used the energy models to explore the impact of four electrification scenarios on the city’s grid, ranging from basic electrification with heat pumps to electrification combined with low-cost energy efficiency and demand flexibility measures. We predicted the ratio of future peak demand to each network zone’s capacity for each scenario and electrification adoption level.
Our analysis found that citywide electrification will raise NYC’s peak power demand by 40% from current levels eventually. The outer boroughs, where low-rise residential buildings dominate, will require grid infrastructure upgrades first. Yet building electrification poses no immediate risk to the grid, given the existing spare capacity of the grid in winter months.
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