Air air conditioners can already support the power mesh. Here is how

With the arrival of the summer, people operate air conditioners in most of the United States but if you are like me, you always feel guilty about it. The past generations managed without air conditioning – do I really need it? How bad is all this electricity to cool down in the world of warming?

If you leave my air conditioner, I feel heat. But if everyone operates their air conditioner at the same time, the electricity demand mutations, which can force the power network operators to activate some The most expensive and bride of power plants. Sometimes, these nails can require a lot of network and lead to Brownouts or power outages.

research I I recently published with a team of scientists that make me feel a little better. We have found it possible Coordination to operate large numbers of home air conditioning unitsBalancing supply and demand on the power network – and without making people bear high temperatures inside their homes.

Studies on these lines, using Remote control of air conditioners To support the network, you have for many years Explore theoretical possibilities Like him. However, a few methods have been proven in practice and not for such a high -value application and this range. The system that we have developed, not only proven the ability to balance the network in the time term of seconds, but also proved that it can be done without affecting the comfort of the population.

Benefits include the reliability of the energy network, which makes it easier on the network to accept more renewable energy. Our goal is to convert air conditioners from a challenge to the power network to origin, and support the shift from fossil fuels towards cleaner energy.

Adjustable equipment

My research focuses on batteries, solar panels and electric equipment – such as electric cars, water heaters, air conditioners and heat pumps – that can Seize to It consumes different amounts of energy at different times.

Originally, the United States An electric network was built To transfer electricity from large power plants to customers and companies. On the basis, the power plants were large, and centralized coal or natural gas, or the energy that was harvested from nuclear reactions. These plants have been always available and can adjust the amount of energy created in response to customers’ request, and therefore the network will be balanced between the energy coming from the producers and use it by consumers.

But the network has changed. there More renewable energy sourcesFrom any energy is not always available – such as solar panels at night or wind turbines on calm days. There are the devices and equipment that I study. These newer options, called “distributed energy resources”, are born or storing energy near the place that consumers need – or adjust the amount of energy they use in the actual time.

No one has changed the network, although: there is not much storage in the system. So every time you turn on the light, for a moment, there is not enough electricity to provide everything it wants at that time: the network needs a power product to generate a little more power. And when you turn off the light, there is very little: the energy product needs a decrease.

The way the power plants are known to what amendment in the actual time required is to monitor the network frequency closely. The goal is to provide electricity at a fixed frequency – 60 hertz – at all times. If more energy is needed than it is produced, the low frequency and power plant enhances the output. If there is a lot of energy that is produced, the frequency rises and the power plant slows down the production slightly. These procedures, a process called “frequency organization”, occurs within seconds to maintain the balance of the network.

This flexibility in the output, primarily from the power plants, is the key to preserving the lights for everyone.

Finding new options

I am interested in how the distributed energy resources improve the flexibility in the network. They can launch more energy, or consume less, to respond to the variable or demand supply, help in achieving a balance between the network, and ensuring that the frequency remains near 60 hertz.

Some people fear that doing this may be invading, and giving Someone outside your home The ability to control the battery or air conditioner. Therefore, we wanted to see whether we can help achieve a balance between the network while organizing the frequency using home air conditioning units instead of power stations-without affecting how the population uses their devices or their comfort in their homes.

From 2019 to 2023, I tried my group at the University of Michigan this approach, in cooperation with researchers at Pecan Street Inc. The Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, funded by the US Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency.

We hired 100 home owners in Austin, Texas, to take a real test of our system. All homes have fully forced refrigeration systems, which we connected to allocated control panels and sensors that the owners allowed us to install in their homes. This device allows us to send instructions to air conditioning units based on the network frequency.

Before I explain how the system works, I first need to explain how the heat works. When people set the thermostat, they choose a temperature, and switch the thermostat of air conditioning compressors and stop it to keep the air temperature inside a small range around that specified point. If the temperature is set at 68 degrees, then the thermostat runs the frequency current when the temperature is, for example, 70, and releases it when it is cooled to 66.

Every few seconds, our system changed slightly the timing of the air conditioning compressor switching some 100 air conditioners, causing the total energy consumption to change the units. In this way, the reaction of our small collection of home air conditioners on the network changed the way the power plant would lead – using more or less energy to balance the network and maintain the frequency near 60 hertz.

Moreover, our system is designed to keep home temperatures within the same small temperature range around the group point.

Approach test

We operated our system in four tests, each lasting one hour. We found encouraging results.

First, air conditioners enable Provide frequency regulation At least precisely like the traditional power plant. Therefore, we have shown that air conditioners can play an important role in increasing network elasticity. But perhaps most importantly – at least in terms of encouraging people to participate in these types of systems – we found that we were able to do this without affecting people’s comfort in their homes.

We found that the temperatures of the house No more than 1.6 Fahrenheit From the group point. Home owners were allowed to overcome controls if they are not uncomfortable, but most of them did not. For most tests, we received requests to exceed zero. In the worst cases, we received requests for more than two of 100 homes in our test.

In practice, this type of technology can be added to The thermostat is available commercially available online. In exchange for the credits on their energy bills, users can choose to join a service managed by a thermostat, a facility provider or some third party.

Then people can run air conditioning at the summer heat without this guilt, knowing that they were helping to make the network more reliable and more able to absorb renewable energy sources – without sacrificing their comfort in this process.

Johanna MatthewAssociate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Michigan University. This article has been republished from Conversation Under the creative public license. Read The original article.