A centralized controller to control power demands of electric water heaters for peek shaving of total house-hold power demands

Abstract

Electric water heaters can be considered as effective energy storage devices. Since electric water heaters use the electric energy to heat water and store it for future use, thus it is valuable to have control over electric water heaters to use them when the demand for power is low and turn them off during periods of peak demands. This paper presents a centralized controller to control energy consumption of domestic electric water heaters (DEWH). The aim of this controller is to turn on/off each individual DEWH to reduce peak power demands. The centralized controller uses Genetic Algorithm (GA) to find the optimal combination of control signals for each water heater. Simulation results show that this method can reduce total peak power demands up to 10% while filling the valleys of the daily load curve.