Published by The Keneda Fund: Imagine an energy system in which each building serves as an extension of the power grid. When all buildings were simply at the receiving end of electricity generated by a few big power plants, that idea wouldn’t have gotten very far. Now, however, many buildings generate and store their own power, and the grid itself is building the capacity to communicate with those buildings. In May, after months of study and consultation with stakeholders, the New Buildings Institute and the U.S. Green Building Council unveiled a GridOptimal Metrics framework to rate the “grid-friendliness” of buildings. The two organizations devised the grading system to provide a way to measure how well buildings will perform as integration becomes more important.

“The purpose of the GridOptimal Buildings initiative is to empower buildings, as well as players on the grid side of the meter, to actively support a transition to a decarbonized grid by leveraging building-energy flexibility,” NBI’s Alexis Miller explained at webinar last year on the topic.

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