Buildings Could Store Heat for the Grid, but Digital Readiness Lags Behind

Buildings can do more than shelter their occupants. Thermally activated building systems, which embed heating and cooling circuits in floors, walls and ceilings, can store heat or coolness in the structure itself and release it on demand. That stored energy could, in principle, serve as a flexibility resource for electricity grids dominated by variable renewables. Yet a new scoping review argues that turning this thermodynamic potential into dependable grid services depends on far more than physics and advanced control algorithms — it hinges on a problem the authors call digital activation readiness.

The study, published in Energy Informatics, combined a PRISMA-ScR-informed scoping review of 123 included evidence sources with a case analysis of documented infrastructure at the University of Southern Denmark Smart Campus. The review maps the literature across five engineering domains: control intelligence, digitalization, system integration, flexibility performance, and comfort management. Because the included studies define outcomes and evaluation settings very differently, the authors deliberately kept their synthesis function-oriented and descriptive rather than prevalence-based, and they did not pool effect sizes.

The picture that emerges is uneven. Control strategies and the quantification of flexibility appear comparatively mature in the literature. By contrast, interoperable sensing, commissioning practices, spatial data coherence, governance arrangements, and market verification are less consistently documented. In practical terms, researchers can demonstrate that a building’s thermal mass can shift load, but the digital plumbing needed to identify which room is which, verify what actually happened, and settle the result in a market remains the weaker link.

To organize these gaps, the authors propose a five-layer Digital Activation Readiness Framework, or DARF. Applied to the Danish campus case, the framework assesses enabling infrastructure including IoT gateways, QR-based commissioning that ties physical equipment to digital records, metadata- and geometry-based spatial representations of the building stock, and privacy-aware geofencing. These components illustrate what a digitally ready building looks like on paper and in deployment.

The authors are explicit about the limits of their evidence. The Smart Campus case supports an assessment of enabling infrastructure, but it does not report an executed flexibility event, a baseline-relative load shift, rebound effects, comfort verification, or a market settlement. DARF therefore functions as a conceptual and preliminary assessment structure rather than a validated performance scale. The study’s contributions are an evidence-bounded taxonomy, a clearer distinction between infrastructure readiness and delivered flexibility, and an identification of the measurements required for future multi-site validation — a reminder that a building ready to flex on paper is not yet a building that has flexed.

Subject of Research: Digital activation readiness of building thermal mass as a grid flexibility resource

Article Title: Digital activation readiness for building thermal mass: a scoping review and danish living-lab infrastructure case

Article References: Ma, Z. G., Madsen, S. S., Staugaard, B. E., Billanes, J. D., & Jørgensen, B. N. (2026). Digital activation readiness for building thermal mass: a scoping review and danish living-lab infrastructure case. Energy Informatics. https://doi.org/10.1186/s42162-026-00683-0

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s42162-026-00683-0

Keywords: thermal mass, demand flexibility, scoping review, smart buildings, digitalization, interoperability, commissioning, living lab, energy informatics, IoT gateways, Digital, activation