Benefit assessment of water-heater management on residential demand response: An event driven approach

Analysis, modeling and development of residential demand response schemes are vital for the next generation active distribution systems. Among residential level deferrable loads thermally controllable loads have shown a great potential to be the candidates for increasing the flexibility of power distribution network. This paper evaluates the benefits of managing residential electric water heater set-points to reduce the overall cost of electricity in the presence of day-ahead forward price at distribution level. Three unique features, (i) consumer comfort by providing more hot water at the time of usage, (ii) reducing residential indoor temperature variations and (iii) reducing the health concerns due to water temperature regulations are addressed in this work. Randomly specified residential units, along with the thermal dynamics are used. ASHRAE standards are used in this work to ensure physical limitations are accurately represented. The results show that appropriately controlling the water heater temperature will be of great value to both utility and consumer demand response programs.