Residential Load Management Using System Frequency and Grid Voltage as Price Indicators

摘要

Demand Response is a key component of the Smart Grid, enabling energy savings through load scheduling and reducing the stress on the grid. During peak consumption periods, utilities require a way of communicating with their consumers and sending signals to reduce their load. Setting up a dedicated communication channel for this purpose can be expensive and resource intensive. This project explores the possibility of generating relative price signals locally, i.e. at the consumer node by sensing physical grid quantities such as voltage and frequency and taking action at the household level. A low power prototype is built in order to demonstrate the approach. The experimental results show that using this method results in a lower total cost of electricity usage for the consumer when compared to a base case where loads are not scheduled intelligently.