An Architecture for a Self-Organized Load Control Mechanism

The amount of power generated from renewable energy sources (RES) is expected to grow substantially in the following years. RES like wind and solar power depend on weather conditions. Therefore they are intermittent in their generation, limiting the ability to make efficient use of them. In this context, demand side flexibility raises as an alternative to increase RES utilization. Appliances with flexible operation times could begin execution at hours where RES availability is forecasted to be larger. Then, mechanisms to schedule the operation time of these appliances in order to maximize the utilization of RES generation are needed. We present an architecture that enables residential households to reschedule their appliances operation in order to increase RES utilization. Residential households receive a control signal which influences their autonomous decision on which hours of the day to begin execution of the appliances complying with individual customer restrictions. The control signal influences the system and is able to guide the aggregated behaviour of sub-sections of the low voltage power grid (micro-grid) to achieve specific load objectives. ... mehrSince no interaction nor direct communication occurs between households the autonomy of customers is respected and privacy concerns are reduced. Additionally, global load objectives are achieved in a self-organized manner. Results show that our approach can increase RES utilization. Limitations and future work are discussed.