C I R E D 22 nd International Conference on Electricity Distribution Stockholm, 10-13 June 2013 Paper 0506 CIRED2013 Session 4 Paper No 0506 CONTROLLING AND OPTIMIZING OF ENERGY STREAMS IN LOCAL BUILDINGS IN A FIELD TEST Vincent BAKKER, Albert MOLDERINK, Stefan NYKAMP Jens REINELT Johann HURINK, Gerard SMIT Westnetz GmbH – DE RWE Effizienz - DE University of Twente – NL stefan.nykamp@westnetz.de jens.reinelt@rwe.com v.bakker@utwente.nl ABSTRACT Demand side management is one of the novel techniques enabled by introducing ICT in the distribution grid. Controllable assets and energy buffers make it possible to maintain a properly functioning grid, improve the efficiency of the grid and prolong the current grid infrastructure. This work describes the development and techniques of a Home Energy Controller (HEC), located in a building. The HEC is a system that controls (smart) appliances in a building to exploit local optimization potential. Furthermore can it offer flexibility to a (DSO owned) Smart Operator to maintain a properly functioning grid. The paper describes the requirements of the system and provides a system design for the HEC. INTRODUCTION Due to increasing energy prices and the greenhouse effect more efficient energy supply is desirable, preferably based on renewable sources. The shift towards a sustainable energy supply is often called the energy transition. The current energy supply chain is based on large scale generation on a number of central places, a tree topology of the grid, a inflexible consumer side of the chain and no buffering, meaning that almost all flexibility is on the generation side. On the other hand, energy generation based on renewable sources is often less flexible than the current generation and a large share of this generation is distributed and connected to/via the lower (voltage) levels of the grid tree. Therefore, the energy transition urges for more flexibility in other parts of the energy supply chain and will have a severe impact on the grid, probably resulting in high investments. Smartening the grid and transforming the domestic customers from static consumers into active players in the production process can help to overcome these issues. This flexibility on the consumers side (or demand side) of the energy supply chain is called Demand Side Management (DSM). DSM incorporates in this context load shifting/shedding, buffering and distributed generation in the MV and LV network. To reach this flexibility at the large group of consumers, a smart grid is necessary. A smart grid is an ICT layer on top of the physical layer of the grid, monitoring and steering multiple grid assets, including the energy streams in the grid via DSM to exploit the flexibility on the consumer side. This work is part of the ‘Smart Operator’ project, in cooperation with a consortium of RWE Deutschland AG (project manager), PSI AG, PSI Nentec GmbH, Horlemann Elektrobau GmbH, Hoppecke GmbH & Co. KG, Maschinenfabrik Reinhausen GmbH, Stiebel Eltron GmbH & Co. KG, the University of Aachen and the University of Twente. The goal of this project is to develop and introduce a hierarchical decentralized and ‘smart’ steering system, the Smart Operator. This system monitors the entire low voltage grid and - if required - triggers steering signals to prevent potential grid instability and impermissible voltage values. The focus of the grid operation is also to prevent overload of grid assets. To achieve this there are several possibilities, such as operating a storage asset, on-load- adjusting of the tap changer at the substation and exploiting the flexibility of local consumption and/or generation of energy in households and buildings via a set of so called Home Energy Controllers (HECs). This paper focuses on the development of the HEC, located inside a building. A HEC is able to monitor and control a group of appliances and is a gateway to the houses’ optimization potential. For the appliances the HEC determines the optimal dispatch timetable, given a certain optimization objective. Different optimization objectives are applicable, e.g. maximize the self-consumption of locally generated energy. Furthermore, the HEC may adapt the local energy profile to react on incentives and steering signals provided externally, for example by a Smart Operator. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows; the HEC control system is based around Triana, which is described in more detail in the background section. Furthermore, the background section describes how the Triana approach is applied within the Smart Operator project. Next, the design choices and actual software design is given. We finalize this paper with some results and conclusions. BACKGROUND AND REQUIREMENTS The house-level control is based on Triana, a generic control framework for Smart Grids, developed by the University of Twente [1]. It is a control methodology, capable of steering large fleet of buildings. Within this project, only a subset of Triana is used. We first give a generic description of Triana, and then specify which elements are used within this project. Triana consists of three steps (see Figure 1): 1. In the first step the HEC learns the behavior of the