Active Control of Electric Water Heater in Smart Grid
AbstractElectric Water Heater (EWH) is one of the most power consuming devices in a house and it is very convenient for demand response applications. However, demand response potential of EWH is not utilized by the users. In order to provide the greater participation of EWHs to demand response, they should be controlled automatically, not with human hand. Active control of the EWH in accordance with the price information from the network is recommended for this purpose. Active control (AC) is performed via Smart Meter (SM) and Active Control Units (ACU) in the house. While electricity prices are sent by the smart grid to ACU via SM, the users introduce their comfort temperature zone and demand response participation rate to the ACU. Updated temperature set point for water heating is determined by ACU using network information and the user preferences. When electricity price is high, the temperature set point is set to a lower value and when the electricity price is low, temperature set point is adjusted a higher value according to the user requests. In this study, active control of the temperature set point is carried out on physical model of EWH. Energy consumption quantity and cost are compared for the cases where AC is implemented and AC is not implemented. Active control of EWH provides decrease in energy consumption costs for the user and to reduce the peak loads in terms of grid, as well.