When summer arrives, people turn on air conditioning in most of the United States, but if you look like me, you always feel a little guilty about it. Past generations managed without air conditioning – do I really need it? And how is it bad to use this whole electricity to cool in a hot world?
If I leave my air conditioning, I’m too hot. But if everyone at the same time ignites their air conditioning most expensive, and dirty, plants. Sometimes those spikes may ask too much of the grid and lead to Brownouts or blackmails.
An investigation I Recently released with a team of scholars feel a little better, though. We found it possible Coordinate the operation of many numbers of domestic air conditioning unitsBalancing supply and demand for the electric grid – and without making people endure high temperatures within their homes.
Studies along these lines, using remote control of air conditioning to support the grid, has many years explored theoretical possibilities Like this. However, few approaches have been shown in practice and never for such a precious application and on this scale. The system we developed has not only demonstrated the ability to balance the grid in times of seconds, but also proved that it is possible to do so without affecting the comfort of residents.
The benefits include increasing the reliability of the electric grid, which facilitates the grid to accept more renewable energy. Our goal is to make air conditioners of a challenge for the electric grid into asset, maintaining a move away from fossil fuels to cleaner energy.
Adjustable equipment
My research focuses on batteries, solar panels and electric equipment – such as electric vehicles, water heaters, air conditioning and heat pumps – this can Adjust oneself to consumes different amounts of energy at different times.
Originally the United States Electric grid was built Transport electricity of large power plants to customers’ homes and businesses. And originally, power plants were large, centralized operations that burned coal or natural gas, or garnered energy from nuclear reactions. These plants were typically always available and could adjust how much power they generated in response to customer demand, so the grid would be balanced between power entering producers and used by consumers.
But the grid changed. Is More renewable energy sourcesFrom which power is not always available – like solar panels at night or windmills on quiet days. And there are the devices and equipment I study. These newer options, called “distributed energy resources”, generate or store energy near where consumers need it – or adjust how much energy they use in real time.
One aspect of the grid did not change, however: there is not much storage in the system. So every time you turn light, for a moment there is not enough electricity to provide everything that wants it right then: the grid needs a powerful producer to generate some more power. And when you turn off light, there’s a bit too much: a powerful producer needs to crawl down.
The way plants know what real -time electrical adjustments are needed is by closely monitoring the grid frequency. The goal is to provide electricity with constant frequency – 60 Hertz – always. If more power is needed than to produce, the frequency falls and a power station accelerates an exit. If you produce too much power, the frequency rises and a power plant slows production slightly. These actions, a process called “frequency regulation”, occur in seconds to keep the grid balanced.
This exit flexibility, mainly from power stations, is key to keeping the lights for everyone.
To find new options
I am interested in how distributed energy resources can improve flexibility in the grid. They can release more energy, or consume less, to respond to the changing supply or demand, and help balance the grid, ensuring that the frequency remains close to 60 Hertz.
Some people are afraid to do so might be invasive, giving someone outside your home the ability to control your battery or air conditioning. That is why we wanted to see if we could help balance the grid with frequency regulation using domestic air conditioning units instead of power plants to touch as residents use their devices or how comfortable they are in their homes.
From 2019 to 2023, my group at the University of Michigan tried this approach, in collaboration with researchers at Pecan Street Inc., a national laboratory of Los Alamos and the University of California, Berkeley, with funding from the US Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency Energy.
We recruited 100 homeowners in Austin, Texas, to conduct a real-world test of our system. All homes had all-house forced air cooling systems that we connected to custom control boards and sensors that the owners allowed us to install in their homes. This equipment let us send instructions to the air conditioning units based on the frequency of the grid.
Before I explain how the system worked, I first have to explain how thermostats work. When people set up thermostats, they choose a temperature, and the thermostat ignites the air conditioning compressor on and off to keep the air temperature within a small range around that fixed point. If the temperature is set at 68 degrees, the thermostat ignites the AC when the temperature is, for example, 70, and turns off when it is cooled until, for example, 66.
Every few seconds, our system has slightly changed the timing of air conditioning compressor switching for some of the 100 air conditioning, causing the units’ aggregate consumption to change. In this way, our small group of domestic air conditioning reacted to a grid changes the way a power station would – using more – less energy to balance the grid and maintain the frequency close to 60 Hertz.
Additionally, our system was designed to keep home temperatures within the same small temperature range around the fixed point.
Testing the approach
We arranged our system in four trials, each lasting one hour. We found two encouraging results.
First, the air conditioners could Provide frequency regulation at least as exactly as a traditional power station. For this reason, we have shown that air conditioning can play a significant role in increasing grid flexibility. But perhaps more importantly – at least in terms of encouraging people to participate in these types of systems – we have found that we are able to do so without affecting the comfort of people in their homes.
We found that home temperatures does not deviate more than 1.6 Fahrenheit from their fixed point. Homeowners were allowed to override the controls if they were uncomfortable, but most did not. For most tests, we have received zero predominant requests. In the worst case, we received predominant requests from two of the 100 homes in our test.
In practice, this type of technology could be added to commercially available online connected thermostats. In exchange for credits on their energy bills, users could choose to join a service managed by the thermostat company, their useful supplier or any other third party.
Then people could turn on the air conditioning in the summer heat without that guilt, knowing that they help make the grid more reliable and more able to accommodate renewable energy sources – without sacrificing their own comfort in the process.
Johanna MathieuAssociate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan. This article is republished by The conversation under license on creative community. Read the Original article.
