Electric water heaters control strategy for providing regulation services and load leveling in electric power systems

To address variation in renewable power generation and electricity demand, this paper presents a new control strategy of thermal loads. Electric water heaters decrease or increase their power consumption for up and down regulations associated to wind power output. The control technique determines the current regulation level that represents the active position of the aggregate with respect to time dependent regulation capacity. Using the temperatures distribution of the loads, the control technique calculates a reference temperature that corresponds to regulation signal. The temperatures distribution can be obtained by real time data made possible by advanced metering and communication technologies or it can be estimated using probabilistic approaches. Loads with temperatures situated in the same temperature range consume the same amount of power by modulating their electricity demand using voltage controller. The results show how the power consumption of aggregated loads follows regulation signals by slightly varying the reference temperature. Higher reference temperature variation allows lowering peak demand while offering minute-to-minute regulations. Also, the results show the evolution of the current regulation level that represents the active position of the aggregate with respect to time dependent regulation capacity.