KPIs for energy flexibility – what is urgent and important in the Netherlands?

Keywords: Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Smart Readiness Indicator, Grid Congestion, Reliability and maintenance, Energy efficiency, Information accessibility, Thermal Comfort, Overheating risk, Peak reduction, CO₂ emissions

Electrification and on-site renewables are increasing grid congestion and demand–supply imbalances in the Netherlands. Based on a stakeholder survey, this study identifies the most urgent and important KPIs for enabling energy flexibility in non-residential buildings. Reliability and maintenance, energy efficiency, and information accessibility emerged as the three highest-priority performance goals.

Introduction

Buildings are central to the global energy transition. In the Netherlands, the targets set by the national Climate Agreement demands electrification of building installations and integration of on-site renewables [1]. These developments increase pressure on electricity grids, leading to congestion and demand–supply imbalances. Building energy flexibility, defined as adjusting demand and generation to grid, user, and climate conditions, offers a solution by using advanced controls to shift, store, and manage energy while maintaining buildings’ operational performance.

To operationalise advanced controllers, robust performance assessment is essential. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) provide actionable metrics to benchmark, manage, and control building performance during flexible events, supporting early design tools, control strategies, and performance reporting.

Although widely studied, KPI selection remains unclear, often driven by data availability rather than relevance to the stakeholders. This requires identifying which aspects of building performance stakeholders consider most important and urgent. Understanding stakeholder priorities and levels of agreement supports effective policy and investment decisions. Because prioritizing different performance aspects involves subjective value judgements that are highly contingent on context and the stakeholders consulted [2], this study focuses specifically on the operational performance of building energy systems in Dutch non-residential buildings.

Stakeholder survey

To gather stakeholders’ opinions on the priority of the performance goals, an anonymous stakeholder survey (consists of 3 sections) was designed (https://buildinflexergy.nl/werkpakket-1).

·         Section 1: Collecting respondent background, including professional roles and building types they work with.

·         Section 2: Respondents rate performance goals on importance and urgency (7-point Likert scale). Importance reflects long-term value, while urgency reflects how soon action is needed, allowing distinction between strategic and time-critical goals (see next section “Performance Goals”).

·         Section 3: Open-ended questions capturing missing goals and top priorities, serving as validation of the predefined set.

Performance Goals

The selection of performance goals was based on the Smart Readiness Indicator (SRI), a European framework under the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) assessing buildings’ technological readiness to interact with occupants and the energy grid [3]. Performance goals were initially derived from SRI categories (energy efficiency and operation, response to user needs, and response to grid needs) and then refined with Dutch industry professionals. The survey was pilot-tested to reduce respondent burden and verify the required time for completion.

This process resulted in 12 performance goals grouped into four aspects.

·         Building aspect: energy efficiency and reliability and maintenance (from SRI), along with operational cost and CO₂ emissions.

·         Occupant aspect: comfort, health (overheating risk in summer), convenience, and information to occupants and building managers.

·         Grid aspect: peak demand reduction, self-sufficiency, and valley filling[*] (from Li et al. [4]).

·         Cross-cutting aspect: one goal for multi-criteria decision support was included, recognising the multi-criteria nature of building operation decisions (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Selected performance goals for the survey.

Survey data analysis

To construct an overall priority ranking, a composite score was calculated for each goal as the mean of its importance and urgency ratings. This analysis was conducted at three levels: individual respondents, stakeholder roles (building managers, owners, policymakers), and building types (healthcare, office, education).

To further prioritise goals, the Eisenhower Matrix was applied. This is a time management and decision-making tool designed to help prioritize tasks based on urgency and importance. Using thresholds for importance and urgency, it classifies goals into four quadrants:

·         “Do” (high importance, high urgency) – goals requiring immediate attention;

·         “Plan” (high importance, low urgency) – goals that are strategically valuable but not yet time-sensitive;

·         “Delegate” (low importance, high urgency) – goals perceived as pressing but of lesser strategic significance;

·         “Eliminate” (low importance, low urgency) – goals that are less critical and less time sensitive.

These quadrants are relative, based on the sample’s mean ratings rather than fixed benchmarks. A goal in the “Eliminate” quadrant does not mean unimportant, but simply lower-ranked compared to others.

Statistical analysis

A non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to assess differences between importance and urgency ratings. Agreement in rankings was evaluated using Kendall’s coefficient of concordance (0–1), applied to individuals, stakeholder roles, and building types. Pearson correlations between mean scores and standard deviations were calculated to assess whether higher-rated goals showed greater consensus.

Results

In total, nineteen stakeholders responded to the survey, who could report multiple stakeholder roles and building types (Table 1). Building manager is the most prevalent role (78.9% of respondents), and healthcare is the most common building type (42.1% of respondents).

Table 1. Respondents’ Characteristics.

Ranking of performance goals

Based on the composite score on a scale of 1-7, reliability and maintenance (6.18) and energy efficiency (5.97) rank highest, followed by information (5.79), comfort (5.68), peak reduction (5.53), overheating risk (5.39), CO₂ emissions (5.29), self-sufficiency (4.97), operational cost (4.95), multi-criteria decision making (4.95), convenience (4.76), and valley filling (4.08). Although the importance rating is positively associated with the urgency rating, Wilcoxon signed-rank tests confirmed that importance ratings significantly exceed urgency ratings for 10 of the 12 goals (all p < 0.05), except for convenience and peak reduction.

Using the mean thresholds of 5.60 for importance and 4.99 for urgency (Figure 2), the Eisenhower Matrix places reliability and maintenance, energy efficiency, information, and comfort in the “Do” quadrant, indicating high importance and high urgency.

Figure 2. Importance vs. Urgency rating per performance goals.

Stakeholder consensus

Figure 3 presents the spread of ratings across performance goals. Energy efficiency and reliability display the lowest variability (SD = 0.65–0.70 for importance; SD = 1.0–1.1 for urgency), reflecting strong agreement on their priority. In contrast, lower-rated goals with mean scores of 4.0–5.0 show standard deviations reaching 1.5–2.0, suggesting considerable divergence in stakeholder ratings.

Figure 3. Mean importance and urgency ratings (±1 SD) of performance goals grouped by SRI category.

Subgroup analysis by role and building type

Across stakeholder roles (Figure 4), reliability and energy efficiency consistently rank highest. Differences mainly occur in mid-tier goals: policymakers assign lower scores overall, particularly for convenience, valley filling, and multi-criteria decision-making, while rating information and peak reduction higher and comfort lower. Despite this, overall ranking of performance goals remains statistically similar across the three stakeholder groups (Kendall’s W = 0.93).

By building type (Figure 4), reliability ranks first and energy efficiency consistently follows. Greater variation appears in mid-tier goals: healthcare prioritises comfort and overheating risk, while education emphasises peak reduction and self-sufficiency, with operational cost ranked lowest. This is reflected in lower agreement (Kendall’s W = 0.70).

Figure 4. Composite scores (a) and priority rankings (b) of building performance goals by stakeholder role and building type. Higher scores indicate greater importance and urgency; rankings range from 1 (highest) to 12 (lowest).

Discussion

This study examined stakeholder priorities for building energy performance in the Netherlands. Reliability and maintenance, together with energy efficiency, consistently ranked highest. Compared with energy flexibility, building stakeholders appear to place greater emphasis on system reliability, which aligns with findings from previous studies [2]. Implementing flexibility strategies often requires frequent heat pump cycling, dynamic battery use, and real-time HVAC adjustments. These can increase mechanical stress and accelerate wear. If this reduces system reliability or uptime, disruptions to building services may outweigh the benefits for grid support or energy cost savings. The relatively low ranking of operational cost is notable. In Dutch non-residential buildings, energy costs are often a limited share of total expenses, and current policy priorities (e.g. sustainability and grid stability) may outweigh cost considerations.

Importance scores are generally higher than urgency scores, suggesting recognised long-term value but limited immediate pressure to act. Many Dutch policy targets are set at medium- to long-term horizons, which may attenuate the sense of urgency even when the underlying goal is considered essential.

Strong agreement on the top two priorities is observed across stakeholder roles and building types. However, variation in the ranking of mid-tier goals suggests a need for context-specific KPI selection. Nevertheless, these findings should be interpreted cautiously due to the limited sample size.

Acknowledgement

The study was conducted together with BG100 (https://buildingg100.nl/). This work is part of the project BuildinFlexergy (RVO-MOOI224004).

References

[1]     Government of the Netherlands. (n.d.). Mitigating climate change. Government.nl. https://www.government.nl/themes/nature-and-the-environment/climate-change/mitigating-climate-change

[2]     Luo, W., Johra, H., Borkowski, E., Liu, X., Wen, J., Ouf, M., ... & Kramer, R. (2025). Developing a weighting scheme for building operational performance: A case study from the Netherlands. Building and Environment, 113762.

[3]     European Commission Directorate-General for Energy, Vito Verbeke, Aerts, D., Reynders, G., et al. (2020). Final report on the technical support to the development of a smart readiness indicator for buildings (Final report). Publications Office of the European Union. https://doi.org/10.2833/41100

[4]     Li, H., Johra, H., de Andrade Pereira, F., Hong, T., Le Dréau, J., Maturo, A., Wei, M., Liu, Y., Saberi-Derakhtenjani, A., Nagy, Z., Marszal-Pomianowska, A., Finn, D., Miyata, S., Kaspar, K., Nweye, K., O’Neill, Z., Pallonetto, F., & Dong, B. (2023). Data-driven key performance indicators and datasets for building energy flexibility: A review and perspectives. Applied Energy, 343, 121217. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2023.121217