Laboratory Testing of Demand-Response Enabled Household Appliances.

摘要

With the advent of the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) systems that are capable of two-way communications between the utility grid and a building, the Automated Home Energy Management (AHEM) industry has made a significant effort to develop capabilities that allow residential building systems to respond to utility demand events by temporarily reducing their electricity use. Major appliance manufacturers are following suit by developing Home Area Network-tied appliance suites that can take signals from the homes smart meter, a.k.a. AMI meter, and adjust their run cycles accordingly. For example, during a peak event a refrigerator could delay a defrost cycle for several hours, or the clothes dryer may run at a lower heat setting so that the power requirement is much lower but clothes take longer to dry. Household appliances can use numerous strategies to respond to demand-side management (DSM) opportunities, which could substantially reduce electricity bills for the residents, depending on the pricing structures used by the utilities to incent these types of responses. However, these systems and infrastructures are very new, and have not been broadly tested in real-world scenarios. Homeowners and utilities have strong incentives to facilitate efficient DSM. Electricity prices and supply reliability are important to residential customers, and are closely tied to the operational practices of the electric utility and how it handles peak demand issues.