DRWB
Demand Response using Waterbeds
| Staff | Dr. Marcus Venzke |
| Start | 1. September 2013 |
| End | 31. December 2019 |
| Financing | TUHH |
Project Description
The German government has set the target to produce 80% of German electricity from renewable energies in the year 2050. Most electricity will be produced by wind and solar farms that will produce significantly more or fewer amounts of power than required depending on the weather. Demand response approaches contribute to balancing production and consumption by adapting the power consumption of loads to the current power availability. This is especially possible with devices having thermal energy storage, e.g. domestic water heaters and waterbeds, that allow shifting electric heat production in application specific limits. The one million German waterbeds have heaters with a total power of about 250 MW, consuming in the order of magnitude of 0.1% of the German electricity.
This project investigates possible contributions of demand response approaches for waterbeds for the transition to renewable energies. It is a problem of multi-criteria optimization. The effect for balancing electricity production and consumption has to be maximized while meeting user requirements and minimizing the total energy consumption and additional costs. Waterbeds shall remain self-contained devices that can be used today without new infrastructures provided by suppliers of electric energy or network operators. The extended temperature control must ensure a narrow comfort temperature range while users are in bed. Costs for production, installation, and operation must be minimized, as – in contrast to large industrial loads – an individual device has a little contribution to demand response only. The reduction of total energy consumption enabled by the optimized control scheme will be one contribution to reducing costs. Waterbeds must be configurable by the user with low efforts and must not reveal data about the user’s behavior.
In the project, a concept for demand response with waterbeds is developed and validated by simulation and with a prototype. A real waterbed is transformed into a prototype by adding a universal module for measurement and control. It is used to develop and validate a thermal model for water beds. Several temperature control algorithms are developed enabling demand response and reducing total energy consumption. These are validated with the prototype and compared using simulation. The analysis includes the integration into power networks, predictability of load profiles, and large, rapid load changes of many waterbeds that may be hazardous for power networks.
Publications
Volker Turau and Christoph Weyer. Cascading Failures Caused by Node Overloading in Complex Networks. In Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on Cyber-Physical Security and Resilience in Smart Grids, April 2016, pp. 1–6. Vienna, Austria.
@InProceedings{Telematik_CPSR-SG2016_SmartGrid,
author = {Volker Turau and Christoph Weyer},
title = {Cascading Failures Caused by Node Overloading in Complex Networks},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Joint Workshop on Cyber-Physical Security and Resilience in Smart Grids},
pages = {1-6},
day = {12},
month = apr,
year = 2016,
location = {Vienna, Austria},
}
Abstract:
It is well known that complex networks are vulnerable to the failure of hubs in terms of structural robustness. An as yet less researched topic is dynamical robustness, which refers to the ability of a network to maintain its dynamical activity against local disturbances. This paper analyzes the impact of overload attacks in complex networks and gives a precise definition of this type of attack using the load redistribution model. The main contribution is a greedy algorithm to select a small number of candidates for an overload attack maximizing the impact with respect to the number of failed nodes and load increase. The quality of the algorithm is analyzed for a real power grid network.
Marcus Venzke and Volker Turau. Simulative Evaluation of Demand Response Approaches for Waterbeds. In Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE International Energy Conference (ENERGYCON), April 2016. Leuven, Belgium.
@InProceedings{Telematik_EnergyCon_2016_SimulationDemandResponseWaterbed,
author = {Marcus Venzke and Volker Turau},
title = {Simulative Evaluation of Demand Response Approaches for Waterbeds},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE International Energy Conference (ENERGYCON)},
pages = ,
day = {4-8},
month = apr,
year = 2016,
location = {Leuven, Belgium},
}
Abstract:
This paper quantitatively compares five demand response (DR) approaches for waterbeds using simulation. The approaches enable privacy by design with a local control and contribute to the planning phase of the electricity network’s balancing process. Approaches are assessed by their energy consumption, their ability to shift power consumption to times of high availability, and the effort of realization and configuration. Load steps were identified as a risk for power network stability. A classification of DR methods, based on the position of their contribution within the electricity network’s balancing process, is used to distinguish our approach from the DR approaches found in the literature.
Marcus Venzke and Volker Turau. A demand response approach locally implementable for waterbeds. In Proceedings of 1st Workshop on Middleware for a Smarter Use of Electric Energy (MidSEE’15), March 2015, pp. 1–6. Cottbus, Germany.
@InProceedings{Telematik_VT_2015_DemandResponseWaterbed,
author = {Marcus Venzke and Volker Turau},
title = {A demand response approach locally implementable for waterbeds},
booktitle = {Proceedings of 1st Workshop on Middleware for a Smarter Use of Electric Energy (MidSEE’15)},
pages = {1-6},
day = {12},
month = mar,
year = 2015,
location = {Cottbus, Germany},
}
Abstract:
The paper presents a demand response scheme for waterbeds that can be implemented in practice today. It balances the requirements of saving energy and shifting power to times with higher power availability by planning heating phases to minimize costs according to a virtual electricity tariff derived from trading prices of an electricity exchange. The approach was successfully validated with a real waterbed under real conditions.