Balancing supply and demand in the presence of renewable generation via demand response for electric water heaters

Abstract

With the increasing presence of renewable energy sources in the electrical power grid, demand response via thermostatic appliances such as electric water heaters is a promising way to compensate for the significant variability in renewable power generation. We propose a multistage stochastic optimization model that computes the optimal day-ahead target profile of the mean thermal energy contained in a large population of heaters, given various possible wind power production and uncontrollable load scenarios. This optimal profile is calculated to make the variable net demand as even as possible.