Nano-Tera Review

HeatReserves
January 25, 2017

John Lygeros

Automatic Control Laboratory, ETH Zrich

www.control.ethz.ch
Increased need for grid ancillary services
Traditional electricity grid
Inflexible, uncertain demand
Flexible, deterministic supply
Feedback control of supply

Increased in renewables
Inflexible, uncertain supply
Who can pick up the slack?
Flexible, controllable demand?
Feedback control of demand
through price/other signals

Figures by
Thermal Loads for grid ancillary services
Potential of thermal storage for ancillary services
Few large or many small buildings
Manipulate electricity demand
Sell slack to grid as reserves

Interplay of engineering issues

Building climate control for ancillary services
Population control of small consumers

and economic issues

Grid value of ancillary services vs. consumer loss of welfare
Marketing schemes for consumer participation
Other issues: Privacy,
Project partners

Power Systems Control Systems

(ETH-PSL) (ETH-ACL)

Grid Operations Building Management

(SwissGrid) (EMPA)
Economics
(HSG-IWOE)
Main research achievements

1. Thermal load demand response framework

2. Reserves by aggregation of small loads
3. Reserves by HVAC systems of large buildings
4. Consumer flexibility (and its uses)
5. Experimental validation on NEST building
Thermal load demand response
framework
Demand response for primary and secondary
frequency control: Combining refrigerators, water
heaters, heat pumps with conventional generators
 Example: Refrigerator control

Primary frequency control by refrigerator population

Emulate generator droop control

Also possible with heat pumps, PEV, water heaters,

Other services: Peak shaving, arbitrage,
Thermal load demand response
framework
Demand response for primary and secondary
frequency control: Combining refrigerators, water
heaters, heat pumps with conventional generators
Reserves through HVAC for large
buildings
Optimisation based control
Scenarios to deal with uncertainty (e.g. weather)
Consumer flexibility and acceptance
What is an acceptable deviation from your desired room temperature?
Survey among Swiss households.
Lowest acceptable Current room temperature Highest acceptable
temperature Average: 21.2 C temperature
Average: 19.6 C Std.Dev.: 1.5C Average: 22.9C
Std.Dev.: 1.7C Median: 21.0 C Std.Dev.: 2.7C
Median: 20.0 C Median: 23.0 C

Variables with significant influence on

accepted downward deviation:
Accepted Age (-) Accepted
downward upward
deviation
Variables with significant influence on deviation
accepted upward deviation:
Age (-), income (-), weight (-)
How to view the role of users?

Engineering view Social science view

Behavioral
participation

Enviroment Occupants

Enviroment Occupants

Building

Building
Energy manage-
ment system

Energy manage-
ment system

14
How to view the role of users?

Joint approach
combining technological + social approach

Enviroment

Energy manage-
ment system Building

Behavioral
Occupants participation

Enviroment

15
Numerical Example

Results for 10 winter weeks

Electricity demand (kWh)

Minimum Mean Maximum
w/o user participation 35.83 70.12 109.79
With user participation 12.42 47.97 94.83

Cost (CHF)
Minimum Mean Maximum
w/o user participation 4.20 8.99 14.68
With user participation 1.66 6.84 13.74
(1.49+0.17)* (6.11+0.73)* (12.64+1.10)*
*(grid+occupants)
Planned experiments on NEST
Test thermal storage reserves on NEST
Backbone systems, medium temperature hot water tanks

Test human participation models

Meet2Create unit

Build on modeling and control work by Empa

Main lessons learned
Reserve potential of large building HVAC confirmed
Improvement of control theoretic methodology
Immediate impact: Dealing with the unpredictability of
renewable electricity generation!
Reserve potential of small loads harder to harvest
But droop-like control of refrigerators very promising
Immediate impact: Valuable alternative in our era of
decreasing inertia!
Ways to involve consumers
And how to exploit their added flexibility
Business case alternatives for commercial buildings
Several options to explore