Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin Center for Electromechanics collaborated with researchers at the University of Twente in the Netherlands to produce two papers on novel “Demand-Side Management”, a phrase used in the electric utility community to describe exerting some level of beneficial control over the use of electricity to maintain safe and efficient operation of the electric grid. Historically, the US utilities have controlled the generation of electric power to match the load. This has provided affordable electricity for decades. The growth of renewables and other distributed generation resources are stressing the traditional approach. Conventional wisdom says that storage technology will relieve that stress. Both papers were submitted for presentation at the Seventh IEEE Conference on Innovative Smart Grid Technologies in Minneapolis.
While conventional wisdom may well be true, this work is part of a growing body of research that is investigating whether it is possible to reduce the amount of storage needed via advanced controls. Minimizing storage on the grid is advantageous due to the fundamentals of energy storage, every time energy is removed from the grid and stored for later use, energy is lost. It is always more energy efficient to have beneficial use of energy as it is generated than it is to store it.
Recognition to the benefit of minimizing storage on the grid is occurring at the same time the Internet of Things is growing, providing robust and low cost solutions to quickly communicate with and control a large number of objects. Thus, factories, facilities, and residences will be much more capable of self-organizing to optimize energy efficient performance in the future than today. This work explores the potential for the grid to enter into that conversation to achieve cooperation to also maintain grid reliability without significant changes in the functionality.
This research is part of a larger collaboration between the University of Texas at Austin and universities in the Netherlands in the area of energy. The collaboration has involved exchanges of students and numerous shorter visits. In this particular interaction, two graduate students from the University of Twente spent the fall of 2015 at CEM.
One of the papers explores ideas for communication between the grid and the various loads considering the latency of the communications and the rates that the loads and the grid can change. The other paper used data from Pecan Street on residential HVAC usage to assess the potential flexibility for accelerating or delaying temperature adjustments.
“Pecan Street” is the common shorthand for an industry-university-government project to measure energy use in a new community in Austin Texas. Many residents allowed the data on their energy use to be recorded, made anonymous, and used for research purposes.