Modelling of household electro-thermal technologies for demand response applications

With increasing penetration of renewable and low carbon energy resources and electrification of energy consumption, Demand Response (DR) is expected to play a more important role in system balancing, network capacity support, and wholesale electricity markets. However, the side effects of DR control could cause various issues that could eventually hinder its deployment. Therefore the impact of DR needs to be properly understood and modelled. A potentially significant source of DR may be found in control of electro-thermal technologies (ETT, i.e. electric heat pump and micro combined heat and power units) installed in the domestic sector, which could help to alleviate low voltage network congestion. In this respect, this paper introduces a detailed physical model which is used to simulate, with high resolution, the load shapes of different ETT in different buildings with different thermal inertia characteristics. Simulation studies are carried out to evaluate the changes in load patterns in the different cases and the impact of possible DR control strategies, also taking into account the thermal comfort level of occupants. The high resolution model developed aims at giving insights on the expected load pattern changes when applying different DR control schemes to different ETT and in different types of houses.