Requirements, Challenges and Experiences of Practical Demand Response in Households

Due to the increasing integration of unmanageable renewable energy sources into the electric power system, active consumers are beginning to participate in its balancing. In order to study the possibility of demand response, i.e. the participation of smart household appliances for balancing the power system, the Demand Response Laboratory at the University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing was designed. Today, it hosts a large number of controllable household appliances whose electricity consumption is continuously monitored. This paper brings preliminary results of the issues encountered when connecting and controlling smart devices within the laboratory and creating a single platform to enable their remote control. This is a prerequisite to assess the available flexibility and connectivity of the devices in the laboratory.