Probability density distributions for household air source heat pump electricity demand

The Irish government is implementing policies to transition Ireland to a low carbon and environmentally sustainable economy by 2050. Ireland has sectoral targets of 600,000 installed heat pumps by 2030, currently roughly 28,000 are installed. Such a high target of heat pumps will not only have a significant effect on electricity demand but also on the management and operation of the grid. In this paper we explore the demand from homes heated by air source heat pumps using an innovative dataset from a field trial in Ireland. To assess the impact of large-scale adoption of heat pumps, this paper estimates the after diversity maximum demand per heat pump heated home. In particular we explore statistical distributions to best model coincident demand, and estimate after diversity maximum demand per home. We use the software package RStudio to model several different distributions. Based on goodness-of-fit statistics and criteria, a Gamma distribution is the best fit. We apply our methodology to data from a similar heat pump trial in the UK to complement our results.