Duration: 1 April 2009 to 30 November 2011

Intervening in the consumption behaviour of electricity consumers is known as the demand-side management method. However, the application of this method to small consumers poses a particular problem: Due to the high number of small consumers, it is not possible to control each appliance individually. Direct control requires current status information about the appliance in order to be able to make planning decisions. Transmitting the status information of each appliance would result in a heavy load on the communication infrastructure and a scaling problem for the central optimiser.

These problems can be solved by aggregating many physical devices into one virtual device. This achieves an approximately equal distribution of status information, which makes it possible to estimate the consumption of a virtual device with sufficient accuracy using models. As a result, the status transmission of individual devices can be omitted through the use of virtual devices. However, the question arises as to how virtual devices are formed from a dynamic set of consumers. A self-organisation method for forming appliance clusters was developed for this purpose.

In addition to refrigerators and dishwashers, heat pumps were treated as specific appliances within the project. The use of these appliances in a virtual appliance first had to be simulatively analysed. Control signals for the virtual appliances were also designed and tested in the simulations. These were embedded in the IEC 61850 standard to ensure standard-compliant communication. For the technical testing of the approach, a controller was designed for a refrigerator that implements the control method.

The project was carried out as part of the FEN network of the state of Lower Saxony.