Smart Home - Thermal Appliances

Smart Home - Thermal Appliances  

This post isn't intended to provide you with additional tricks to become couch potatoes just because it has the words 'smart home' in it. Instead, this is about utilizing smart home devices to help grid operate more efficiently.

"100 % renewable energy - ASAP", that's the ultimate goal most of us in the sustainable energy industry are working towards everyday. This behemoth of a transition seems more feasible each passing day. It is not just the falling prices of solar, wind and energy storage equipment but changing attitude of people world wide who are ready for this revolutionary change. Clean Energy for the Bright Future.

We should remind ourselves of the most basic rule that our electric grid relies on, before integrating more renewable energy resources into it. Demand always needs to be equal to supply. If we fail to follow this rule we face various problems in grid operations. I am not going in details about those right now, perhaps those can be discussed some other time.

The toughest problem we face with all renewable energy resources is that they are intermittently available. That contradicts with the rule I mentioned above. To solve this problem we need to tap in all the possible resources which can provide flexibility for power usage. That's why batteries are becoming so important these days. But is it the only solution? No, there is already an existing infrastructure available which can contribute in solving this problem. That solution is grid connected electric water heaters. They are already installed in many US houses which makes them an existing part of the grid.

Electric water heaters (EWH) are helpful because they can store thermal energy in the form of hot water. This thermal energy storing device can then be further connected to other hot water using appliances which include dish and clothes washers. The concept of Internet of Things (IOT) can play an important role here. These three home appliances - electric water heater, dish and clothes washers can communicate using IOT protocols. Dish and clothes washers once loaded, can send signals to an EWH. At the same time an EWH can be connected to the grid and receive communication from the grid for the best time to operate. The optimal time to run home appliances can be dictated by these IOT devices. 

It can benefit both customers and electric utilities. Customers will be benefited because most of the electric utilities have variable rate structure for power usage. As renewable energy resources are integrated into the grid, variable rate structure will become more common. Utilizing electricity at the lowest possible rates would lower customers electric bills.

At the same time grid operations can be benefited in the following ways:

1. Using existing infrastructure can reduce battery project sizing which will directly result in reduced cost.
2. Power generation from renewable energy power plants do not need to be curtailed if we can generate similar flexible loads during the period of over-generation. 
3. Load leveling services and frequency regulation can be provided to benefit the grid. 

This figure will help you visualize the concept. For this to happen, electric utilities, water heater manufacturers and home appliance manufacturers need to come together. Hopefully this becomes reality in the coming future. 

Chinmay Morankar

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