LF Energy Summit Europe 2026

As buildings become active participants in the energy transition, understanding flexibility at the building and occupant level is becoming increasingly important for addressing grid congestion challenges. While many energy system models rely on simplified representations, detailed grid-integrated building models can provide deeper insight into how HVAC systems, EV charging, distributed energy resources, and occupant behavior interact with the grid in practice.

This talk presents CityLearn as an open-source platform for studying coordinated energy flexibility strategies across buildings and districts. Recently integrated into the LF Energy community, CityLearn enables researchers and practitioners to explore how building dynamics and occupant-centric control approaches can reveal flexibility potential often overlooked in simplified representations. The session will discuss advanced control strategies for HVAC systems, electrical storage, EV charging, and occupant comfort, together with the importance of connecting detailed building intelligence with broader power grid modeling frameworks to better capture realistic building-grid interactions.