Potential of individual heat pumps for renewable energy storage in Smart Grid

Abstract

Ever-increasing power market and environmental policy enforce growth of renewable power sources. Renewables inflexibility and dependency on weather condition causes periodically imbalance in power system due to the green power overproduction. With the increase of renewable sources, the balancing problems in power system will be increasingly significance issue. It is proposed to use individual heat pumps as a next tool for energy system adjustment support. Power system adjustment will be carried out by active demand side management by intended domestic hot water tanks overheating. The smart grid individual heat pumps setpoints will be switched at community or even country scale. The strategy allows shaving the overproduction peaks through short-term increase of electricity consumption in remote controlled heat pumps and to lowering power demand during green power deficits using the thermal energy stored in overheated domestic hot water. The dynamic mathematical simulations were made to define the operation and limitation of active control strategy of heat pumps integrated into smart grid. The results allow testing and assessing the potential of individual heat pumps as a next tool for balancing the power system with large scale of renewable power.