Abstract
Increasing fuel prices and capacity investment deferral place an increasing demand for peak reduction from distribution level systems. Residential and commercial devices, such as HVAC systems and water heaters, are increasingly involved in load control programs, and their use may generate synchronization and rebound effects, such as artificial peaks caused by device optimization. While there have been concerns over device synchronization, few studies quantify the extent of this effect with numerical values. In this study, we attempt to investigate whether control efforts result in device synchronization or rebound effects. We focus on three clustering methods - Ward's clustering, Euclidean K-means, and Density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise - to evaluate the extent of synchronization of a fleet of water heaters and HVAC systems in Atlanta, Georgia. Our findings show that synchronization and rebound effects are present in the neighborhood's water heaters, but none were found in the HVAC systems. Further, high usage water heaters are more susceptible to synchronization and rebound effects.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 676-689 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | IEEE Open Access Journal of Power and Energy |
| Volume | 11 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2024 |
Funding
This work was supported by UT-Battelle LLC with the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Buildings Technologies Office, under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725. Nora Agah was with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, TN, USA. The U.S. Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan). This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Buildings Technologies Office, under contract number DE-AC05-00OR22725.
Keywords
- Demand response
- HVAC
- cold start
- direct load control
- peak shifting
- rebound effect
- synchronization
- water heater