Shifting air‐conditioner load in residential buildings: benefits for low‐carbon integrated power grids

Abstract

This study presents a simulation of low-carbon electricity supply for Australia, contributing new knowledge by demonstrating the benefits of load shifting in residential buildings for downsizing renewable electricity grids comprising wind, hydro, biomass, and solar resources. The load-shifting potential for the whole of Australia is estimated, based on air-conditioner load data and an insulation model for residential buildings. Load shifting is applied to enable transferring residential airconditioner load from peak to off-peak periods, assuming that air-conditioners can be turned-on a few hours ahead of need, during periods where demand is low and renewable resource availability is high, and turned-off during periods of high demand and low resource availability. Thus, load shifting can effectively reduce installed capacity requirements in renewable electricity grids. For 1 h load shifting of residential air-conditioners, Australian electricity demand can be met at the current reliability standards by 130 GW installed capacity, at cost around 12.5 ¢/kWh, and a capacity factor of 32%. The installed capacity can be further reduced by increasing the number of hours that loads can be shifted. The findings suggest that the application of load shifting in residential buildings can play a significant role for power networks with high renewable energy penetration.

Optimizing 100%‐renewable grids through shifting residential water‐heater load

“…We have obtained a high installed capacity and low capacity factor in our study compared with Ali et al This is because the shiftable air‐conditioner load in their study accounts for around 4% of total electricity demand compared with a shiftable EWH load of around 1.4% of total demand. The opportunities to reduce the capacity of renewable electricity grid increase with an increase in the amount of shiftable load provided that the spilt electricity is not drained out.…”

“…This section presents a comparison between the results obtained from our simulation and previous studies done by Ali et al 4 and Lenzen et al 1 We run our simulation with the same input parameters (Table 1) and a biofuel capacity limited to 15-folds the existing capacity (1.7 GW) as observed in the previous studies. 21,39,40 We run our simulation with the load-shifting algorithm and allow a 1-hour shift in EWH load to reduce the installed capacity of the renewable electricity grid; a similar approach is explored by Ali et al 4 (Table 4), we have demonstrated that by shifting EWH demand, the capacity factor of 100%-renewable electricity grid can be increased and the total capacity of the grid can be decreased.…”

“…Demand‐side management strategies (such as load‐shifting) are one way to reduce the installed capacity of a renewable electricity grid. These strategies help ease the operation of the electricity grid by increasing its stability through perfect demand‐supply matching as well as providing balancing reserves for intermittent renewable resources …”

“…These strategies help ease the operation of the electricity grid by increasing its stability through perfect demand-supply matching as well as providing balancing reserves for intermittent renewable resources. 4 In dynamic load-shifting, utility companies can reschedule consumer appliances to either run during periods of high renewable resources and low demand or stop their operation during periods of low renewable resources and high demand.…”

Renewable-powered desalination as an optimisation pathway for renewable energy systems: the case of Australia’s Murray–Darling Basin

“…Our load-shifting algorithm is based on the work of Ali et al (2018), Ali et al (2019), and Keck et al (2019). Our concept of using the demand of seawater desalination for load-shifting has the following additional key benefits:…”