Managing Time Shiftable Devices

Summary

Heat pumps, induction cooking, electric vehicles (EVs) - our energy consumption is rapidly becoming more and more electric. And with good reason: electrification (switching to devices that use electrical energy) is an effective way of reducing carbon emissions when the used energy is produced in a renewable way, so it is one of many ways by which we can try to limit global warming and climate change. This shift doesn't come without technical difficulties however - let's dive in! The average household uses around 10-25 kWh per day (depending on usage of air conditioning, electric heating, et cetera), with a peak power draw of up to 5 kW. Usually net energy production peaks due to solar panels occur around noon, and consumption peaks due to household and entertainment activities occur around 18:00-19:00. Fully charging an electric vehicle requires around 70 kWh, and usually draws power in the range of 3-11 kW - if this aligns with the usual peak power draw, this means a single household with a charging electric vehicle can match the peak power draw of about three households without electric vehicles! Here are some examples of what the daily energy profile of a household with solar panels without electric vehicle look like (data from the European CoSSMic project, graph generated using Mermaid): --- config: themeVariables: xyChart: plotColorPalette: "#000000, #00AAAA, #AA00AA, #AAAA00" --- xychart-beta x-axis "Time (hours)" ["0", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "10", "11", "12", "13", "14", "15", "16", "17", "18", "19", "20", "21", "22", "23", "24"] y-axis "Net power (kW)" -0.6 --> 1.75 line [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0] line [0.550999999999476, 0.53899999999976, 0.524000000000342, 0.456000000000131, 1.17900000000009, 1.2510000000002, 0.565999999999804, 0.59900000000016, 0.0169999999993706, -0.361000000000331, -0.524999999999636, -0.295999999999822, -0.203999999999724, -0.335000000000036, 0.0799999999994725, -0....