Mitigation of wind power fluctuations by intelligent response of demand and distributed generation

With the world becoming ever more conscious of the necessity for clean, sustainable energy sources, an increased proportion of energy produced by wind resources is expected. In the current power system, the integration of such large capacity of non-load-following and intermittent supply leads to several challenges, one of which is to control the balance between demand and supply. A large - not yet utilized - source that may provide flexibility to contribute to this balance is available at the household level. Responsive loads, such as heat pump heating systems, distributed generation from e.g. micro-CHP (Combined Heat and Power) and storage facilities as provided by electric vehicles can be intelligently controlled in the future smart grid in order to adapt to fluctuating wind power in near real-time. Efficient coordination mechanisms for matching demand and supply involving huge numbers of small flexible units are needed to unleash this large flexibility potential. One of these enabling technologies, the PowerMatcher, has already been proven in several field trials in real-life circumstances. This multi-agent- based system uses electronic markets to coordinate devices with the objective of matching electricity supply and demand. In this paper, the potential of the PowerMatcher technology is explored to accommodate mass integration of electricity produced by wind energy by adapting flexible household demand and supply to the availability of wind power. In this way the need for fossil fuel based extra reserve capacity will be minimized as compared to business as usual. These studies, from the European FP 7 project Smart House Smart Grid, have been achieved by running large-scale simulations, under real-life conditions. In these simulation studies the Dutch WLO-SE (Wefare and Living Environment) scenario has been followed, that foresees a strong increase in capacity of off-shore wind energy from 3 GW in 2020 to 10 GW in 2040 in the Netherlands. Results have been extr- polated to even faster wind energy growth scenarios as envisioned by the wind energy industry (e.g. We@sea). We will show that by using demand response in homes we can accommodate mass integration of electricity produced by wind. Smart control can lead to reduced reserve capacity needed and the homes can absorb a much larger percentage of renewable energy from wind.