15/02/2016
Electric grids that make maximum use of volatile renewables such as sun and wind need flexible consumers. These absorb energy when it is available to store it in a cheaper form than batteries. This "demand side management" is the key to sucessful transformation to renewables.
Existing grid technology only allows to use customer flexibility from 500 kW upwards. This practically excludes most commercial and all household customers from any contribution. As there is huge and growing potential of such small flexible devices (fridges and freezers, air-condition units, pumps, white goods, electric vehicles, heat pumps) our objective is to make it economical to integrate them also. This requires the reduction of the economic threshold by a factor of thousand to some 500 Watts. To do this, the associated cost must be reduced also by a factor on 1000. Our demonstrator (Foto: Erik Buchmann) and description give an insight how we propose to do it.