Balancing the system comfortably? Electric storage heating and residential demand response

Plans for low-carbon transitions in cool climates typically include electrification of heating. This poses challenges for electrical network managers, who will need to cater for substantial new loads. Transition also implies at least two types of change in heating practices: (a) as people shift to electric heating and (b) as they adapt usage in response to the availability and price of power in a system that is supply-driven and increasingly reliant on renewable generation. From a systems point of view, electric storage heating has proved useful in the past and could offer a valuable source of flexibility in future, comparing favourably with the current generation of domestic batteries. In order to realise its potential, though, it has to be more readily controllable than traditional storage heaters, for two reasons. The people who use the heaters need to be able to heat their homes or offices adequately at times of their choosing, and system operators also need to be able to charge up or switch off heaters in response to conditions on local networks or on the transmission grid, to minimise curtailment of renewable generation when this is abundant or the use of back-up generation when demand exceeds supply. This paper explains why and how a new,’smart’ version of an established technology – electric storage heating - is being tested to offer flexibility to networks that are supplied by an increasing proportion of renewable generation. Drawing on the demand response literature and on background research for a project in which smart thermal storage appliances are being tested in Ireland, Germany and Latvia, it sets out some theoretical and practical considerations about the role and of storage heating in energy transitions, the actors involved in demand response, and how value may be distributed between them. The paper concludes with some considerations for further research.