Simulation-based approach to impact analysis of electric water heater demand management based on consumer cost and comfort

Abstract

A demand side management (DSM) strategy is proposed in this work to schedule Electric Water Heater in order to maintain or elevate consumer's thermal comfort while reducing demand cost at the end use. The motivation is to analyze the impact of Electric Water Heater on HVAC energy consumption, consumer comfort and health. The analysis parameters are total reduction in EWH heating cost, HVAC demand, and total room temperature deviations in comparing periods of spring, summer, fall and winter. In an attempt to model a real system and test the strategy, Gridlab-D software core is used. The modeling system utilizes a residential unit model, including HVAC and EWH dynamic models developed by PNNL. The algorithm then utilizes climate information for outdoor temperature data, heat gain through the building exterior and solar radiation for scheduling and model inputs. The model also includes heat gains from body heat of residents. Iterations of an apartment complex with random parameters including HVAC set points, Hot Water consumption patterns, and different number of residents are used to imitate a realistic residential apartment complex. The Hot water draw pattern has been randomly generated for each apartment in the complex based on standard ASHRAE 90.2-2004. The duration of simulation is 1096 days.