Improvement of methods for reconstructing water heating aggregated load curves and evaluating demand-side control benefits

Electric water heating represents a substantial share of electricity consumption, and can be a significant part in utility system peak. Storage water heaters with limited capacity have been a useful tool for some utilities to manage the electrical load, generally promoted by attractive tariff structure. The present paper proposes a method to estimate the results of such a strategy. A hot water needs diversity model is exposed and fitted on real data. An original method for modeling power demand due to standing losses is explained as an addition to Beute and Lane's work, which allows to compare various types of water heating systems and potential savings by limiting standing losses or installed power. As an application, some water heating national load curves are reconstructed. Potential or realized savings are computed for France and Italy.