Demand Side Management ? Creating Flexibility to Accommodate Renewable Energy in Existing Energy Networks

Demand side management will become part of the array of tools necessary to accommodate the integration of large scale non-dispatchable renewable energy such as wind onto existing energy networks. The built environment is responsible for over 50% of energy use and therefore is heavily targeted in terms of energy/carbon reduction policies. Commercial and industrial buildings in many cases have sufficient electricity and building infrastructure capacities to accommodate demand side management through for example the adoption of thermal energy storage techniques to allow the storage of heating or cooling capacity. In considering how this may be achieved at a domestic household level, there are immediate cost and space constraints for the incorporation of thermal storage vessels to provide typically between 2 hours and 4 hours of storage depending on the needs of the energy suppliers, energy network, the subsequent energy tariffs and of course, the end-users. This study will highlight the existing capacity of UK domestic dwellings to meet this challenge, the role of traditional electrically driven vapour compression heat pumps in enhancing this demand-side capacity through fossil-fuel boiler substitution, the challenges such a substitution may place on the network, the role of thermal storage in providing greater demand side management and the impact on both the energy networks and potential end-users. The study will conclude with recommendations for heat pump and energy storage development to minimise impacts on the existing energy networks.