The impact of extreme weather on peak electricity demand from homes heated by air source heat pumps

Abstract

Ireland has a renewable heat sectoral target of 600,000 heat pumps by 2030 with currently just 44,000 installed. Such a high heat pump target will have a significant effect on electricity demand and on the management and operation of the electricity grid. Many studies rely on synthetic data to estimate the impact of the adoption of low carbon technologies. This paper explores residential electricity demand using an innovative dataset from a field trial of deeply retrofitted homes heated by air source heat pumps. We estimate the after diversity maximum demand during a period of extreme weather, comparing it to a typical winter day. We assess which statistical distributions best model the electricity demand per home heated by an air source heat pump. The after diversity max demand is 3.84 kW compared to 2.33 kW, while a Gamma distribution best models average coincident electricity demand for the homes.