Provision of flexibility at high wind penetration levels using modern storage heater load

Modern storage heaters can facilitate higher levels of wind generation on the system by mitigating the effects of wind variability and uncertainty. This paper presents a coordinated control strategy for modern storage heater load to reduce conventional plant ramping and cycling requirements. Control practices and mechanisms required to utilise storage heater load for reducing system net load variability have been presented. The communication update rate to the heaters has been shown to impact conformance to the control objective. Acknowledging the impracticality of individual appliance control, a clustering scheme has been proposed to reduce the overall communication requirements. Heater load shaping mechanisms have also been presented to provide real-time system ancillary services at high wind penetration levels.