WATTALYST: WATT anANALYST

an image Overall energy consumption in EU has been on the rise for quite some time. According to a Cap Gemini report, the price for electricity in Europe is expected to continue rising rapidly as member states commit to replacing cheap and CO2 intensive fossil fuel generation with low emissions or renewable alternatives, and as prices for fuel continue to increase. Peak pricing is especially serious as peak demand reaches even higher levels. The competitiveness of European industries is thus in danger, and further predicted increases of peak demand will be a strain on the economy as well as increasing the risk of power blackouts. Demand Response (DR) promises to be a highly effective method for managing electricity consumption and reducing peak loads. Demand Response can be defined as changes in electricity usage by end-use customers from their normal consumption patterns in response to changes in the price of electricity over time, or to incentive payments designed to induce lower electricity use at times of high wholesale market prices or when system reliability is jeopardized. DR impacts a broad variety of the challenges faced by the electricity industry, including CO2 emissions reduction target, integration of renewable energy sources and reduction of the need to invest in peak capacity, etc. Wattalyst is a consortium consisting of 7 partners that aims to understand in what context and how would consumers reduce demand. For example, identifying the loads (e.g. washing machines, electric vehicles) that can be shifted and those that cannot; and identifying the loads that can be reduced (e.g. cooling, heating) and those that cannot. Another goal of Wattalyst is to understand effective methods of conveying the DR signals to the users. i.e. on interface design; communication means (in-house displays, SMS messages), message emphasis (environmental, economical) and customized messages based on gender, age and profile. WATTALYST's objective is to generate new knowledge about how ICT can be developed and used to make more effective and efficient energy DR solutions - i.e. how energy demand (need) patterns and energy response (production) patterns can be harmonized. WATTALYST focus to build new knowledge is primarily related to the consumer ("demand") side. In order to investigate this, WATTALYST will perform both theoretical and experimental research, and validate the results in three pilot sites (Bilbao, Lulea and Mallorca). Theoretical research, on economic and business models, where AUEB has a leading role aims to study the sustainability and economic feasibility of the WATTALYST approach. To achieve that, will develop economic models for energy producers and utility models for consumers, as well as value-chain models for the exchange of consumption monitoring information among the players. These models will be used to derive efficient consumption schemes for energy producers and efficient incentive schemes for consumers.


The methodology used for experimental research (pilots) includes the following steps:

  • Consider a specific DR strategy, in terms of an incentive scheme and a user interface design.
  • Make the DR signal available to a selected group of users.
  • Perform the following cycle on the selected user group:
  • Inform users and DR designers
  • Study the Influence of the DR on user consumption
  • Observe fine-grained/coarse-grained energy consumption
  • Infer energy profiles, consumption patterns
  • Build a repository of the collected experimental results and fine-tune the DR strategy based
    on DR performance analysis tools.
The new knowledge generated is expected to instrument more efficient DR system implementations and thus
contribute towards several major energy related environmental, human, societal and industrial long-term challenges and objectives:
  • Reduced energy consumption and peak-loaded periods.
  • Reduced harmful emissions (e.g. CO2), by reduced need for "dirty" energy sources.
  • Increased reliability in energy provisioning to critical functions in society and industry.
  • Increased opportunities to use new environmentally friendly energy sources.
  • Improved energy economy.

 

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In Wattalyst AUEB:
  • Has a leading role in the economic and business modeling studies
  • Proposes efficient incentives-based schemes for Demand-Response for both residential and industrial environments
  • Designes the optimization framework for consumption scheduling towards peak loads reduction and social welfare maximization

Publications

Conferences

  • M. Jain, V. Chandan, M. Minou, G. Thanos, T. K. Wijaya, A. Lindt and A. Gylling. “Methodologies for Effective Demand Response Messaging”. Proc. IEEE SmartGridComm, 2015, Miami, Florida. [pdf].
  • M. Minou, E. Kaskantiri, G.D Stamoulis. “Discovering the Right Incentives for Demand Response Programs”. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM Sixth International Conference on Future Energy Systems (pp. 271-276). ACM. [pdf].
  • Chandan V., Ganu T. Wiyava K. T., Minou M., Stamoulis G., Thanos G., Deva P. Seetharam. “iDR: Consumer and Grid Friendly Demand Response ”. The 5th ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems (e-Energy '14), June 2014, Cambridge, UK. [pdf]
  • Minou M., Thanos G., Vasirani M.,Ganu T., Jain M. Gylling A. “Evaluating Demand Response Programs: Getting the Key Performance Indicators Right ”. Demand Response Workshop of the 5th ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems (e-Energy '14), June 2014, Cambridge, UK. [pdf]
  • M. Kanakakis, M. Minou, C. Courcoubetis, G. D. Stamoulis, G. Thanos. “A Practical Iterative Price-Based Approach for Optimal Demand-Response”. The Third International Conference on Smart Grids, Green Communications and IT Energy-aware Technologies, Lisbon, Portugal, 2013. [pdf]
  • G. Thanos, M. Minou, T. Ganu, V. Arya, D. Chakraborty, J. Deventer, G. D. Stamoulis. “Evaluating Demand Response Programs By Means Of Key Performance Indicators”. 5th International Conference on Communication Systems and Networks (COMSNETS), Bangalore, India, 2013. [pdf]