Smart electric storage heating and potential for residential demand response

Low-carbon transition plans for temperate and sub-polar regions typically involve some electrification of space heating. This poses challenges to electricity system operation and market design, as it increases overall demand and alters the temporal patterns of that demand. One response to the challenge is to ‘smarten’ electrical heating, enabling it to respond to network conditions by storing energy at times of plentiful supply, releasing it in response to customer demands and offering rapid-response ancillary services to the grid. Shared operation of domestic electrical heating, in such a scenario, may imply changes in everyday heating practices and will change the number of system stakeholders, their activities and how they relate to each other.This paper sets out some practical and theoretical issues relating to the potential for residential demand response via electric storage heating, drawing on academic and policy-related literature and on material from a current research project. It offers a brief history of residential storage heating and recent developments, paying particular attention to customer experience; considers the role of distributed storage in energy transitions and associated questions of value; outlines how agency and value in a smart system may be distributed between stakeholders; and assesses continuity and change in storage heating. While the paper focuses on storage heating, many of the issue raised apply to heat pumps, given their functional similarities with storage heaters and water heaters. The paper concludes with some conditions to be met if smart storage heating is to succeed in the twin tasks of providing effective customer service and demand response, and sets out questions for further research into demand response and heating practices.