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Experiment of an electric water heater with autonomous frequency regulation
Author(s) -
Kondoh Junji
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
ieej transactions on electrical and electronic engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.254
H-Index - 30
eISSN - 1931-4981
pISSN - 1931-4973
DOI - 10.1002/tee.21843
Subject(s) - automatic frequency control , electric heating , power (physics) , heating element , on board , electric power , automotive engineering , water heater , measure (data warehouse) , engineering , frequency regulation , electrical engineering , heating system , control (management) , wind power , electric power system , computer science , mechanical engineering , aerospace engineering , physics , quantum mechanics , database , inlet , artificial intelligence
Integration of wind power generation into power systems has been limited because of the problem of frequency regulation during light‐load periods at night in some areas in Japan. As a solution, autonomous frequency regulation by electric water heaters (EWHs) has been proposed. A control board to control the power consumption of an EWH is fabricated. It measures both the power system frequency and thermal energy stored in a hot‐water tank, and then turns on/off a heating element according to a control algorithm. It is confirmed that the board can measure power system frequency every 1 s with a resolution of better than 0.01 Hz and that it can measure the vertical temperature distribution in the storage tank with an acceptable accuracy to calculate the future power consumption ratio, which is a parameter that decides the turn on/off of the heating element while considering end‐user comfort. Then, an EWH with autonomous frequency regulation is fabricated by embedding the board, and the EWH is operated to investigate the performance. © 2013 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.