Future electricity demand and flexibility potential of private households

Abstract

In the upcoming years, a disruptive revolution of the electricity demand in terms of load patterns and annual consumption is expected. Electricity from renewable energy sources can be used to decarbonise further sectors like the mobility sector. These new appliances, like electric vehicles, significantly increase and reshape the electricity demand of private households while efficiency gains slightly reduce the electricity consumption. Furthermore, the ongoing digitalisation allows an efficient controlling of the flexibility of these appliances. These developments make detailed investigations of the future electricity demand and flexibility potentials of private households inevitable. For this purpose, a Bottom-Up simulation method has been developed and is presented in this study. Using time use data of household members, activity profiles are derived based on a time-dependent Markov-chain model. Based on these activity profiles, different submodels for the simulation of electric appliances, lighting, heating and electric vehicles are used. The investigations in this contribution show the influence of new appliances like electric vehicles on the electricity demand of private households in terms of peak load and energy demand. Furthermore, the results allow a better estimation of the flexibility potential of appliances like washing machines based on the simultaneity of their usage.