Air Conditioners Can Actually Support the Power Grid. Here’s How

As for spring, people burn a lot of US air conditioners, but you always feel a little guilty about it if you are like me. Former generations are driven without air conditioning – do I really need? How bad is it to use all this electricity for cooling in the hot world?

I’m very hot if I turn off my air conditioner. However, if everyone burns its air conditioner, electricity network operators require electricity that can force some to activate The most expensive and dirty, power plants. Sometimes these spikes can give and lead more than much Brown or darkness.

Research I It was recently published with a scientist group, although he feels a little better. We found it been possible To coordinate the work of a large number of home air conditioning unitsHigh temperatures continue in their homes without balancing supply and demand and demand in the electricity network.

Using work through these lines Remote control of air conditioners There are years to support Grid examined the theoretical capabilities It’s like this. However, in practice, several approaches have been demonstrated and never applied so highly valuable and never. The system we developed, demonstrated the ability to express the grid balance of seconds in Timescales, but also proved that it was possible without influencing the comfort of residents.

The benefits increase the reliability of the power network that facilitates GRID more recovered energy. Our goal is to turn air conditioners from a problem to convert an asset from a problem, to support the clean energy from fuels towards clean energy.

Adjustable equipment

My research can do batteries, solar panels and electrical equipment, such as electric vehicles, water heaters, air conditioners and heat pumps adjust oneself for consume a variety of energy at different times.

First USA Electric Network was built Transportation of electricity to customers’ homes and workplaces from major power plants. Initially, power plants were large, centralized operations that produce energy from coal or natural gas, or producing energy from nuclear reactions. These plants are usually available, and can regulate how much power they have created in response to the customer needs, so the network would be balanced between manufacturers and the power used by consumers.

But the network has changed. Have More Renewable Energy SourcesWhich power is not always available – like wind turbines in quiet days, like solar panels in night or in bitch days. And there are devices and equipment I have learned. These new options called “Distributed Energy Resources” create or maintain the energy of how consumers need or use how much energy they use in real time.

There is no more storage to the system, although a aspect of the grid has not changed. So, every time you turn on a light, there is no electricity to ensure everything you want for a moment: The network needs a power manufacturer to create a little more power. When you turn off a light there are a little lot: a power manufacturer needs to go down.

They know that the power of power plants know what the regulations are, and watch the network’s frequency closely. The goal is to electricity permanently – 60 hertz – always to provide electricity. If you need more power than the manufactured, frequency drops and power plant exits increase. If there are many power produced, the frequency rises and slows the power plant production a bit. These actions occur in a few seconds to protect the network balance, a process called “frequency adjustment”.

This output elasticity is primarily the key to maintaining power plants and the lights for everyone.

Find a new option

I am interested in how distributed energy resources can improve the convenience of violence. They can consume less to allow more energy to leave or consume less, respond to variable supply or student responding and to stay near the bar.

Some people are afraid of this work can be invasive, gives someone outside your house The ability to manage your battery or air conditioning. Therefore, use the air conditioning parts of the house, using the air conditioning parts, do we want to balance the balance with the frequency regulation, without affecting the devices or their homes?

From 2019 to 2023, my group at the University of Michigan, Pecan Street Inc, LOS Alamos National Laboratory and California Laboratory and California University, Berkeley University, US Energy Department Financing Advanced research projects agency-energy.

In order to make our system real world test, Austin hired 100 hosts in Texas. All homes, special management boards and sensors have regular cooling systems in all homes. This equipment will send instructions to air conditioning units based on the network’s frequency.

Before explaining how the system works, I must explain how thermostats work. When people set the thermostats, take a temperature and turn on the thermostat air conditioning compressor and turn off and turn off the air temperature in a small number around this set. If the temperature is set to 68 degrees, when the thermostat says when the temperature is about 70, it burns up to 66 peeling.

Every few seconds, our system has changed the time of the air conditioning compressor, which has a slightly air conditioning compressor, which causes the uniques to change the total energy consumption of units. In this way, a small group of our air conditioners changed the way to the network – balancing the network and reacted using more or less energy to maintain a frequency near 60 Hertz.

Moreover, our system is designed to store home temperatures in the same small temperature range at the specified point.

To try the approach

Our system lasts in four tests and every hour. We found two encouraging results.

First, air conditioners were able to Ensure frequency adjustment accurately as the traditional power plant at least. Therefore, we have shown that air conditioners can play an important role in increasing the comfort of the grid. But perhaps more importantly – at least in order to encourage people to participate in such systems – we can do this without affecting the comfort of people in their homes.

We saw that the house temperature 1,6 Fahrenheit did not deviate of their own sets. Homeowners were allowed to cancel the controls if they are concerned, but they did not do the most. We received zero cancellation requests for most tests. In the worst case, we asked two of the 100 homes in our test.

In practice, such technology can be added Thermostats connected to the Internet in terms of trade. In exchange for loans on energy bills, users can choose to connect to a thermostat company, their utility provider or other third party.

Then people could burn the summer temperature today in the summer temperature to help the sin in heating, so far to help adopt reliable and renewable energy sources.

Johanna mathieuAssociate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan. This article is republished Conversation Under the Creative Commons license. Read original article.