Ecogrid EU project — Real time price based load control and economic benefits in a wind production based system

The concept of Demand Response (DR) has been growing strongly in the last few years. Many projects have been deployed as well in an attempt to push customers and loads to participate more in the power system. One of the most ambitious projects in that area is the EU FP7 project named EcoGrid EU. In this project, it is attempted to use close to real time market prices in order to provide additional balancing resources from flexible consumption. This paper presents the work developed in that project regarding price elasticity and availability of process loads with internal relations and saturation restrictions. An industrial compressed air system, equipped with a compressed air storage unit and an electrical water heater are used as examples of flexible loads. The paper discusses how the volatility in the real time price and the quality of the price forecast consequently affects the energy costs and efficiency of this group of flexible consumer loads. Simulation results, which show the benefits of such system and possible threats to those benefits, are presented.