Power Grid Load Balancing by Using Smart Home Appliances

Computer Engineering electronics Engineering Civil Engineering

Climate change is one of the greatest environmental, social and economic threats facing the planet, and can be mitigated by increasing the efficiency of the electric power generation and distribution system. Dynamic demand control is a low-cost technology that fosters better load balancing of the electricity grid, and thus enable savings on CO2 emissions at power plants. This paper discusses a practical and inexpensive solution for the implementation of dynamic demand control, based on a dedicated peripheral for a general-purpose microcontroller. Pre-production test of the peripheral has been carried out by emulating the actual microprocessor. Simulations have been carried out, to investigate actual efficacy of the proposed approach. Global warming is a major concern nowadays, mostly due to the increase on greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere. Power plants burning fossil fuel are responsible for a significant fraction of greenhouse pollutants emission. Among many issues, the global efficiency of power grid is limited by the need of providing a sufficient amount of spare power to face unpredictable demand peaks. Renewable energy sources (wind, solar plants) cause much lower pollution, but provide an inherently intermittent supply, thus again resulting in grid balancing issues. Erratic load imbalances are compensated, at the supply-side, by a service called loading..