Flex Ready® : Enabling Interoperability for Building Energy Flexibility
An initiative led by RTE, ENEDIS, GIMELEC and THINK SMARTGRIDS
Flex Ready® is an open interoperability framework designed to accelerate the deployment of energy flexibility services in buildings and infrastructures.
Developed to support the transition toward smarter and more resilient energy systems, Flex Ready® creates a common language between buildings, Building Automation & Control Systems (BACS), energy management platforms and energy flexibility market actors.
Its ambition is to facilitate secure, standardised and scalable exchanges between connected buildings and energy ecosystems, enabling buildings to actively contribute to grid balancing, energy efficiency and decarbonisation objectives.
Flex Ready® is part of ongoing international standardisation efforts and aims to become an international reference framework aligned with IEC 62746-4 related to Demand Side Resource Interfaces.
Read more on the UC5: Data exchange for flexibility in tertiary buildings
A Common Framework for Energy Flexibility
Buildings are becoming increasingly connected, intelligent and capable of interacting dynamically with the power system. To unlock this potential at scale, interoperability is essential.
Flex Ready addresses this challenge by defining standardised interfaces and communication principles enabling systems and market actors to exchange flexibility-related information in a reliable and harmonised way.
By promoting interoperability between equipment manufacturers, BACS providers, aggregators and energy service operators, Flex Ready® contributes to the emergence of an open demand-side flexibility ecosystem.
Flex Ready® APIs
The Flex Ready® APIs provide the technical foundation enabling interoperability between building systems and flexibility operators.
They are structured around two complementary interfaces:
Supplier API
The Supplier API enables communication between building CEMS (BACS) and electricity suppliers, for example in the context of dynamic pricing schemes.
Agregator API
The Agregator API enables the transmission of flexibility requests, activation signals and monitoring information between aggregators and building CEMS (BACS) systems.
[ French version : télécharger ]
Flex Ready® addresses the tertiary building use case in connection with the IEC 62746-4 standard
Flex Ready defines a standardized data model for the exchange of data between tertiary buildings equipped with a BACS as required by the European EPBD Directive. It can be applied to office buildings, schools, hospitals, retail facilities, logistics buildings, and other commercial buildings.
By aligning with IEC 62746-4 and promoting open interoperability principles, Flex Ready® aims to foster the emergence of a scalable ecosystem in which buildings, energy systems and flexibility operators can collaborate efficiently.
Its objective is to support the large-scale deployment of smart, flexible and interoperable buildings capable of addressing the new challenges of the energy transition.