Integration of Responsive Residential Loads into Distribution Management Systems

Lead Performer: Oak Ridge National Laboratory – Oak Ridge, TN
Partners:
-- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory – Richland, WA
-- Electric Power Research Institute Inc. -- Palo Alto, CA
-- University of Tennessee – Knoxville, TN
DOE Total Funding: $2,191,000
Project Term:  October 1, 2019 – September 30, 2021
Funding Type: Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium Lab Call

Project Objective

The utility industry has been curtailing customer loads, such as central air conditioning (AC) systems, pool pumps, and water heaters, on a limited scale for 40 years. If small commercial and residential loads could be cost-effectively controlled and integrated, they could become a significant resource over time. Aggregate response of these smart loads could balance or improve the operational efficiency and reliability of the grid. Because these loads are so numerous, their inclusion as a resource in demand management programs is desirable.

The challenge is these residential loads are widely dispersed and individual load sizes are small. When utilities deploy programs in their service territory, they typically choose to target specific load types that are obvious and appropriate to their territory. Given this, the utility is limited to vendors that bundle proprietary device and communications technologies with control and deployment services.

This project will demonstrate how a home energy management system (HEMS) can use open communication networks and demand response (DR) ready end-use devices could be used to support a wide range of demand response use-cases or in the future to mass-market customers. The project stakeholders have identified appliances and loads of most interest. These interactions will be tested in a laboratory environment before deploying a small number of each appliance type in strategic locations across the Southeast.

After laboratory testing, the project team will perform field evaluations for utility-integrated demand-side management solution using open standards and open-source reference platforms with utilities in the Southeast. The goal of this project is to provide electric utilities with both the software and hardware, all based on open-standards, to leverage demand-side management of residential loads to provide grid resiliency services and to improve grid resiliency prior to any event.

Project Impact

Increased adoption of Internet of things (IoT), ubiquitous home wireless networking, reliable cellular coverage, mobile devices, etc., enables stakeholders to envision simple, scalable, and low-cost interactions between utilities and small customer loads. The vision is that consumers may choose to buy “smart appliances or devices” through mainstream retail supply channels because they desire home automation features that also happen to make the devices inherently “demand response ready.” This enables low-cost, and ubiquitous, aggregations of small curtailable smart loads, even loads that are not alike, could be cost-effective for peak shaving, balancing intermittent renewables, responding to hourly energy prices, and relieving stressed distribution circuits.

This project will result in more mature use-case documentation for use in publicly available program design guides to aid in standardizing the industry. It will also result in defining sets of standard signals and interactions for each appliance type and in all use cases defined by the project team.

Contacts

DOE Technology Manager: Erika Gupta
Lead Performer: George Hernandez, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory