Modeling, Simulations and Analysis of a Demand-Side Management Pilot Project : A collaboration together with Vattenfall R&D

Sammanfattning: The increasing number of renewable power sources gives positive outcomes to a more sustainable society. This change does not come without problems, since the power supply from renewable energy sources is intermittent. This leads to uncertainty to keep the balance between production and consumption. One solution could be to make the end-users adapt their consumption to the production. Vattenfall has encountered this problem with a project called Smart Customer Gotland. The purpose of the project was to give the end-users the opportunity to actively participate in the energy market by remotely steer their space heaters and water boilers. The goals with the project were to investigate if the energy usage and the electricity cost for the end-user got reduced by using a control schedule, without affecting the end-user’s comfort. The purpose with this master thesis was to answer the project goals with a simulation replica of the Smart Customer Gotland. With the simulation replica could same input parameters be used and the outcomes could easier be compare when the devices were remotely steered. The simulation replica consisted of a house model with a space heater and a water boiler module steered with the same control schedule used in the project. To make the model more accurate, a module which models the end-users’ opportunity to override the remote control schedule was designed. This module was designed from a data analysis, showing that the end-users did few overrides and the overrides that were made tend to switch off the device without affecting their comfort. The results from the simulation replica showed that the end-users only marginally reduce their electricity cost when a control schedule was used. The end-users com-fort seemed not to be affected, since the indoor temperature and the temperature inside the water tank were kept within acceptable levels.