Abdullah Jamal

• Kozadajevs, Jevgenijs; Mutule, Anna; Jamal, Abdullah; Zalitis, Ivars; Petrichenko, Lubova & Kishor, Nand (2026). Space heating retrofits with rooftop photovoltaics in Norwegian buildings: tailoring financial support levels to drive localised investments in green technologies. Frontiers in Energy Research. 14. doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2026.1898478. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Globally, the energy supply systems (ESSs) of buildings are increasingly integrating clean energy technologies to reduce energy costs while supporting the transition to a net-zero-emission future. In this regard, the role of energy use in buildings in the European Union (EU) has already been established. Norway also has ambitious climate goals, with improvements to energy use in buildings representing a significant part of the effort. There is consensus among Norwegian energy experts, consumers, and prosumers regarding the need for greater consumer involvement in ESSs and financial incentives to support it. However, the necessary support levels and supported actions have not been explored deeply in regard to sustainability of energy supply and flexibility, both of which are recognised as important factors for future energy systems. Therefore, we analysed the impacts of financial support relative to the living area on the sustainability and flexibility achieved by retrofitting ESSs in buildings and by considering different support priorities. The genetic algorithm (GA) was utilised to derive an optimal equipment set for each sub-scenario and perform scheduling with a hybrid (optimisation and rule-based) control for three buildings in Norway. To better evaluate the flexibility of energy use, we devised a new parameter called the energy cost flexibility improvement factor (ECFIF) . The results indicate that support focused primarily toward improvements in sustainability provide the most benefits overall, with indications that a support strategy that does not enforce equipment selection could be even more successful. For the studied Norwegian buildings, a support of 10–40 EUR/m 2 represents the highest increase in profitability while a support of 20–35 EUR/m 2 achieves the highest impact on ESS performance. However, separate determination of the support level may be necessary for high-cost and high-impact projects, such as rebuilding commonly used electric-based space heating to hot-water-circulation-based systems, to achieve the envisioned climate goals.

• Jamal, Abdullah; Kishor, Nand & Mutale, Anna (2026). Disaggregation of Space-Heating load in buildings from hourly Smart-Meter data using a hybrid ICA–PLR approach. Energy and Buildings. ISSN 0378-7788. 364. doi: 10.1016/j.enbuild.2026.117618. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Space-heating dominates electricity consumption in Norwegian public buildings, yet hourly space-heating load (SHL) is rarely sub-metered, limiting monitoring and demand response (DR). The objective of this study is to develop and evaluate a physics-guided, scalable method to disaggregate hourly SHL from whole-building hourly electric load using only weather and calendar information, without SHL sub-metering. Specifically, this study evaluates the performance of a hybrid ICA-PLR estimator for hourly SHL disaggregation against PLR, RFR, and FastICA benchmarks. This study presents a hybrid disaggregation framework that couples Independent Component Analysis (ICA) with a heating-degree-hour piecewise linear regression (HDH-PLR) under a temperature- and schedule-aware cold-hour mask. ICA extracts a heating-like latent component from cold-hour residuals across multiple buildings; HDH-PLR re-anchors scale and slope to a physics-consistent temperature signature; and mask gating with lag, seasonal, and weekend factors suppresses warm-weather false activation. The proposed framework requires only hourly smart-meter, weather, and calendar data. The method is applied to a portfolio of 22 public buildings (schools, kindergartens, offices, and institutions). All quantitative validation is performed on a sub-metered validation subset of 5 buildings using hourly SHL as ground truth. Across the validation subset, results indicate that hourly accuracy reaches R2 ≈ 0.91 with nMAE ≈ 13 % to 14 %, while estimated hourly SHL remains near zero during summer periods. At the building level in the validation subset, the method tracks morning recovery, night setbacks, and cold-spell amplitudes with fewer mild-weather false positives than the benchmark techniques. The approach yields interpretable parameters (balance temperature, lag, seasonal/weekend factors) that support weather-normalized monitoring and flexibility operations in public building portfolios. This work demonstrates that physics-guided disaggregation can extend operational visibility of public-building heating systems using only utility-grade data and support weather-normalized monitoring and flexibility planning across public-building portfolios.

• Jana, Teremranova,; Jamal, Abdullah; Lubov, Petrichenko,; Marina, Arias,; Fernando, Borges, & Dragos, Cirstea, Stefan [Show all 10 contributors for this article] (2026). Electricity customer satisfaction with renewable energy support schemes: a case study for Latvia, Romania, Spain, Portugal, Norway. Frontiers in Energy Research. 13. doi: 10.3389/fenrg.2025.1736680. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The success of the energy transition increasingly depends on engaging household electricity customers as active customers. The paper investigates how active ...

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• Jamal, Abdullah & Kishor, Nand (2026). Energy Flexibility as a Service (EFaaS) scenarios from Verdal public buildings, where the role of final consumers/prosumers is enabled actively in the energy market. Zenodo. doi: 10.5281/ZENODO.19132993. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This scientific report presents the progress of Work Package 3 (WP3), “Design of energy flexibility solutions”, in the PERSIST project. It describes the development and first implementation of a common technical framework for Energy Flexibility as a Service (EFaaS) and applies this framework to Verdal municipality. In the project proposal, Deliverable D3.1 is defined as “EFaaS scenarios on Verdal municipality”. In this report, that objective is met through a detailed case study of Verdal’s municipal public-building portfolio, which acts as the primary test site. The work is based on hourly data from 1 January to 31 December 2024.

• Petrichenko, Lubova; Jamal, Abdullah; Mutule, Anna; Kishor, Nand; Lazdins, Roberts & Kozadajevs, Jevgenijs (2025). Evaluation of existing schemes supporting directly or indirectly investments at consumer level into assets that contribute to long-term changes in electricity production or consumption. Zenodo. doi: 10.5281/ZENODO.15771818. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The transition to renewable energy and the increasing decentralization of energy systems have underscored the need to evaluate regulatory frameworks that influence consumer investments in long-term electricity production and consumption assets. Understanding whether these frameworks promote or hinder such investments is critical to achieving national and global sustainability goals.

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