A basic load following control strategy in a direct load control program

Use of sustainable energies such as wind is constantly increasing. However, integrating wind energy with the grid tends to reduce the reliability of the system due to the intermittency of the wind. Direct load control (DLC) is one solution to balance consumption with generation. Domestic electric water heaters (DEWHs) are feasible candidate for this purpose because they hold a large share of the aggregated load and follow a similar daily profile. This paper presents a novel load control strategy based on load forecast which provides an estimation on the ramp-up/down reserve capacity. The proposed controller was deployed on a pilot project called PowerShift Atlantic. This project is lead by Canadian Maritime utilities that demonstrates direct load control strategies to provide up to 20MW of ancillary services by controlling various load classes. This paper presents the control strategy implemented in this system along with the experimental results.