A pooling based load shift strategy for household appliances

Abstract

An increasing utilization of renewable energy sources like wind or sunlight demands for balancing energy to overcome (potentially unforeseen) fluctuations in the power production. Instead of adapting the power supply, as it is currently done, it is also possible to control the power demand. As household appliances account for a large fraction of the overall load and are a major contributor to the daily load peaks, we investigate how a pool of household appliances can be used for load shifting. The outlined strategy has the potential to integrate different appliance types into demand side management measures. A pooling algorithm is used to group appliances into virtual devices which can fulfil given stochastic constraints. Due to permanent reorganization of virtual devices, the system is able to adapt itself to long-term changes. Demand side management measures like these may be used for example to compensate errors in wind power prognosis, or to smooth the startup-ramps of conventional power plants generating balance energy.