Flexibility Estimation of Residential Heat Pumps under Heat Demand Uncertainty

Abstract

With the increasing penetration of intermittent renewable energy generation, there is a growing demand to use the inherent flexibility within buildings to absorb renewable related disruptions. Heat pumps play a particularly important role, as they account for a high share of electricity consumption in residential units. The most common way of quantifying the flexibility is by considering the response of the building or the household appliances to external penalty signals. However, this approach neither accounts for the use cases of flexibility trading nor considers its impact on the prosumer comfort, when the heat pump should cover the stochastic domestic hot water (DHW) consumption. Therefore, in this paper, a new approach to quantifying the flexibility potential of residential heat pumps is proposed. This methodology enables the prosumers themselves to generate and submit the operating plan of the heat pump to the system operator and trade the alternative operating plans of the heat pump on the flexibility market. In addition, the impact of the flexibility provision on the prosumer comfort is investigated by calculating the warm water temperature drops in the thermal energy storage given heat demand forecast errors. The results show that the approach with constant capacity reservation in the thermal energy storage provides the best solution, with an average of 2.5 min unsatisfactory time per day and a maximum temperature drop of 2.3∘C.

Promoting the Flexibility of Thermal Prosumers Equipped with Heat Pumps to Support Power Grid Management

“…Other studies developed sophisticated controls for DR in buildings via HP [30,31]. You et al [32] evaluated the operational flexibility of residential HPs, taking into account heat demand uncertainties. Schibuola et al [33] compared three control strategies for DR through an HP coupled with a solar thermal plant and a photovoltaic system.…”

Peak Power of Heat Source for Domestic Hot Water Preparation (DHW) for Residential Estate in Poland as a Representative Case Study for the Climate of Central Europe

“…In practice, only simplified methods are used, based on empirical experience from the operation of existing systems. For this reason, in paper [30], the authors presented a new approach of quantifying the flexibility potential of residential heat pumps in the context of stochastic character of domestic hot water usage, highlighting the probabilistic meaning of hot water consumption. In the literature on hot water systems, one can find many works that focus on increasing their energy efficiency or comfort of use.…”