Expert Assessment of Prioritized Determinants For a Smarter Grid Through The Lens of Residential Demand Response: The Case Study of Ontario, Canada

In recent years, smart grids have attracted considerable attention. However, despite the promising potential of the technologies encompassed within such systems, their adoption has been slow, geographically varied, and in the context of residential demand response, often subject to public scrutiny. The heterogeneous evolution of the smart grid is not only the product of technological limitations but is additionally sensitive to socio-political considerations prevalent at the national or provincial level. Through expert interviews that were conducted in Ontario, Canada, this study provides insights into which smart grid factors are considered as most important for its development, and also what are the drivers, inhibitors, benefits, and drawbacks that a smart grid provides and / or entails, placing particular emphasis on residential demand response programs. The constructs scrutinized were adapted from previous studies, and the information collected was analyzed following the procedure of the Grounded Delphi Method. The findings indicate that a consensus was reached, in that smart grids pave the way for increased demand flexibility and loss reductions, though these are contingent on measures being implemented regarding the creation of investment opportunities, engagement of consumers, and ensuring the security of private data. Relevant policy implications and research recommendations are also explored.

The Potential of Utilising Residential Demand Response to Balance the Fluctuation of Wind Power in New Zealand

<p>The substantial penetration of wind power introduces increased flexibility requirements on the power system and puts increased pressure on the instantaneous reserve levels required. Instantaneous reserves are a security product that ensures that electricity demand can continue to be met in the event of unplanned generation or transmission interruptions. This reserve must be available to respond very quickly to generation-demand variability. While this is an integral component of the power system, providing instantaneous reserve increases the production cost of power. More calls from energy researchers and stakeholders ask for loads to play an increasingly important role in balancing the short timescale fluctuations in generated wind power. The purpose of this study is to assess the current level of demand responsiveness among domestic refrigerators, freezers, and water heaters and their potential to contribute towards instantaneous reserve and balance the fluctuation of wind. Refrigerators, freezers, and water heaters can generally store energy due to their thermal mass. Interrupting these domestic loads for short time by employing direct load control strategies makes it possible to control these appliances by turning them on or off before their reach their maximum or minimum temperatures or by slightly modifying their temperature set point. Using this strategy helps to ensure that the overall satisfaction of consumers should not be affected. This study first modelled the load profiles of the participated residential appliances and statistically assessed the potential of controlling these residential loads using direct load control strategies to contribute towards instantaneous reserves to mitigate and balance the fluctuation of wind power in the years: 2014, 2020 and 2030. In the second section, it demonstrated the capabilities of the assessed residential responsive loads within Wellington Region network to compensate for and balance the fluctuation of wind power generated from the West Wind Farm in seven selected days in 2013-2014 as a showcase. Such technology can enable a power system operator to remove the burden of both providing instantaneous reserve from conventional sources, and instead maintain such capacity from available residential demand response. The study ends with recommendations to engage residential loads in fast timescale demand response and suggests directions for future research.</p>

The Potential of Utilising Residential Demand Response to Balance the Fluctuation of Wind Power in New Zealand

<p>The substantial penetration of wind power introduces increased flexibility requirements on the power system and puts increased pressure on the instantaneous reserve levels required. Instantaneous reserves are a security product that ensures that electricity demand can continue to be met in the event of unplanned generation or transmission interruptions. This reserve must be available to respond very quickly to generation-demand variability. While this is an integral component of the power system, providing instantaneous reserve increases the production cost of power. More calls from energy researchers and stakeholders ask for loads to play an increasingly important role in balancing the short timescale fluctuations in generated wind power. The purpose of this study is to assess the current level of demand responsiveness among domestic refrigerators, freezers, and water heaters and their potential to contribute towards instantaneous reserve and balance the fluctuation of wind. Refrigerators, freezers, and water heaters can generally store energy due to their thermal mass. Interrupting these domestic loads for short time by employing direct load control strategies makes it possible to control these appliances by turning them on or off before their reach their maximum or minimum temperatures or by slightly modifying their temperature set point. Using this strategy helps to ensure that the overall satisfaction of consumers should not be affected. This study first modelled the load profiles of the participated residential appliances and statistically assessed the potential of controlling these residential loads using direct load control strategies to contribute towards instantaneous reserves to mitigate and balance the fluctuation of wind power in the years: 2014, 2020 and 2030. In the second section, it demonstrated the capabilities of the assessed residential responsive loads within Wellington Region network to compensate for and balance the fluctuation of wind power generated from the West Wind Farm in seven selected days in 2013-2014 as a showcase. Such technology can enable a power system operator to remove the burden of both providing instantaneous reserve from conventional sources, and instead maintain such capacity from available residential demand response. The study ends with recommendations to engage residential loads in fast timescale demand response and suggests directions for future research.</p>

Quantifying the structure of residential water demand in the United States: a Generalized Exact Affine Stone Index demand framework

We utilize a Generalized Exact Affine Stone Index system to evaluate the structure of residential water demand that recognizes demand interrelationship between residential and bottled water in the United States, allowing for precommitted consumption. Further, we address expenditure and price endogeneity by accounting for the supply side of the price determination mechanism. A significant substitutability relationship between residential and bottled water is found, while substantial precommitments are established in both residential and bottled water consumption. Residential demand becomes price-elastic once the precommitted level is reached. Finally, ignoring substitutability, precommitments, or endogeneity distorts the demand structure, resulting in erroneous policy implications.

Socioeconomic potential for rainwater harvesting systems in southern Brazilian municipalities

The implementation of rainwater harvesting (RWH) systems depends on technical and socioeconomic assessments. However, most studies do not consider socioeconomic aspects, which could lead to different degrees of RWH implementation and technology selection due to economic constraints and local regulations. We evaluated the socioeconomic potential for RWH as an alternative for water supply of 24 Southern Brazilian municipalities with less than 50,000 inhabitants. A total of 10,080 RWH configurations were assessed and a reliability analysis was carried out to define the RWH system configurations potentially implementable (RWH+) in each municipality. RWH economic benefits were estimated from a social point of view, based on the reduction of the monthly water payment. Overall, RWH+ supplying higher demands with higher economics savings were feasible, as expected. However, several municipalities that showed RWH+ supplying 100% of the domestic water demands obtained lower economic savings, due to low water tariff and water consumption. Still, a set of municipalities presented RWH+ for rainwater demand replacing 50% to 60% of the residential demand, for which the high-water tariffs reflected in higher economics savings. The advantages of using the RWH systems outstand even more when the investments at Federal and Local levels are considered.

EV Overnight Charging Strategy in Residential Sector: Case of Winter Season in Quebec

Electric Vehicle (EV) technologies offer a leading-edge solution for clean transportation and have evolved substantially in recent years. The growing market and policies of governments predict EV massive penetration shortly; however, their large deployment faces some resistances such as the high prices compared to Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) cars, the required infrastructure, the liability for novelty and standardisation. During winter periods of cold countries, since the use of heating systems increases, the peak power may produce stress to the grid. This fact, combined with EVs high penetration, during charging periods inside of high consumption hours might overload the network, becoming a threat to its stability. This article presents a framework to evaluate load shifting strategies to reschedule the EV charging to lower grid load periods. The undesirable “rebound” effect of load shifting strategies is confirmed, leading us to our EV local overnight charging strategy (EV-ONCS). Our strategy combines the forecast of residential demand using probabilistic distribution from historical consumption, prediction of the EV expected availability to charge and the charging strategy itself. EV-ONCS avoids demand rebound of classic methods and allows a peak-to-average ratio reduction demonstrating the relief for the grid with very low implementation cost.