Ripple Control as a possible tool for daily load balancing in an open electricity market environment

In this paper the effective usage of Ripple Control Systems (RCS) is investigated from the point of view of daily load balancing. A computer simulation model is developed to be able to study the power consumption of RCS-controllable groups and their impact on the daily load curve. The design of an appropriate switching pattern is formulated as an optimization problem with the objective of the highest possible minimal daily load constrained by duration of service and derivative conditions. After the decomposition of the problem a fuzzy logic and genetic algorithm based optimization method is developed. The efficiency of the method is shown comparing different switching patterns by computer simulations.