Active Control of Thermostatic Loads for Economic and Technical Support to Distribution Grids

Active control of electric water heaters (EWHs) is presented in this paper as a means of exploiting demand flexibility for supporting low-voltage (LV) distribution grids. A single-node model of an EWH is implemented in DIgSILENT PowerFactory using a thermal energy balancing equation and three decentralized control schemes are designed to ensure consumer comfort, economic benefit to the consumer, and technical support to LV grids. First, a price-based control that adaptively adjusts an allowable energy band per electricity price is implemented to ensure economic benefit. Next, an adaptive update of the energy band is done based on feeder loading to respect thermal grid constraints. Finally, a voltage-based control is implemented to provide real-time voltage support to the LV grids. Simulation results demonstrate the capability of the presented method to realize both economic and technical advantages. For the given configuration and pricing scheme, EWH owners are able to decrease their electricity cost by 29.33%, along with simultaneous assurance of consumer comfort and grid constraints.