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Normal daily activity contribute to a unique laboratory environment for testing the potentials, characteristics and implementation of flexible power demand. The office is schedule to be operating in the end of 2006.
The following load units will be made automatically controllable as flexible loads:
- 12 electrical space heaters (0.5-1.5 kW)
- One 0.5 kW refrigerator
- One 4 kW hot water system with storage tank
- One 2 kW coffee machine
- One 5 kW air conditioner
Research activities
The office will form the basis for a number of research activities, including:
Flexibility studies
The impact of the required service level on the load flexibility and the potential economic benefit for the consumers will be analysed. The various controllable electrical units will be controlled within given conditions according to the required service level on the one hand and the potential benefits on the other hand.
Control strategies
The impact on the total efficiency (in terms of cost per kWh) of various control strategies for the demand will be tested – including central management, distributed management based on simulated local price signals, distributed management based on the voltage levels and distributed management based on the common line frequency.
Time delay
The impact on the overall system efficiency of the time step and time delay (from hours to seconds) of the synthetic price signal provided to the consumer will be analysed – including a) fixed prices within an hour, b) new (fixed) price signals every minute and c) asynchronous local price signals defined by actual local status.
Scaling
The problems related to scaling the results to larger (national) systems will be analysed.
User interface
The project will develop, demonstrate and test different ways for the user to specify the required service levels – taking into account that is must be easy to operate and easy to see the consequences and benefit. |