Benefits of using Intelligent Electric Water Heaters on an Island in theAzores, Portugal

Sammanfattning: The application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) devices to Electric Water Heater (EWH) can increase its energy efficiency and allow the EWH to deliver various services to the customer as well as the utilities such as power plant owners and distributionsystem operator (DSO). Such ICT-enabled EWH is termed as smart EWH. It can eliminate the thermal energy losses present in EWH, saving energy hence the money for the end-user and customers. By aggregating various EWH in the houses of a particular region can offer demand response to the grid which can positively influence the operation of power plants and distribution systems of a particular region. The comprehensive objective of this thesis study is to study and quantify the benefits of using these smart EWH on various stakeholders of the power system using data analysis. The project was performed using different case studies to support the early-stage development of a pilot project being performed at Klugit Energy. The results of the analysis show that the stand-by losses in the EWH can be equivalent to 30-40% which means the loss of around €100-200 annually for each customer. The case study of a prototype resulted that the cost of electricity for that customer reduced by 21% from €0.156/kWh to €0.123/kWh by the operation of EWH in smart mode. The load shifting of around 9% is observed if all the customers in the particular sub-station region install these smart EWH. The displacement of 18.5 % of the energy from oil power plant is observed if these EWH are operated in smart mode instead of their operation in conventional way.