Future flexibility of the EU27 heat pump heated residential building stock

With the increasing uptake of heat pumps and photovoltaics within the European building stock, demand-side management becomes an increasingly discussed option to balance the volatile share of renewable electricity generation. But what is the potential short-term flexibility of electricity loads in residential buildings within EU countries? To answer these questions, we modeled the electricity demand of so called "Prosumagers" on EU member state level by combining an electricity system model (Balmorel), a building stock model (Invert/EE-Lab), and a Prosumager model (FLEX). Prosumagers are considered to be households that use a heat pump and minimize their energy costs through optimization using an hourly electricity price signal, keeping the indoor temperature in a specific bandwidth. Results show that prosumaging households within the EU-27 could shift 9 to 28 TWh of electricity annually in 2030, depending on the electricity price as an incentive. One third of this shifting potential can be attributed to the thermal mass of the buildings themselves. At the same time, electricity peak demand could rise up to 12% (worst-case) in some EU countries in the future, if all households react to the same hourly electricity price. Capacity-based tariffs were shown to mitigate this peak load increase significantly.