Demand-Side Flexibility in Low-Carbon Grids

通过减少温室气体排放和改善我们的能源安全来减轻气候变化的后果，这是一个巨大的挑战。对于电力行业来说尤其如此，因为传统的完全可控的燃煤和燃气发电厂必然会部分被清洁的风能和太阳能发电所取代，不幸的是，这些发电厂缺乏调节自身发电量的手段。大多数传统发电站通常都是灵活的，因为它们可以随意改变电力输出，以满足不断变化的电力需求，并应对电网设备故障等不可预测的事件。工业化和日益数字化的经济体显然不愿意牺牲其可靠的电力供应，尽管发电结构发生了变化。这促使人们寻找潜在的新解决方案，以提供平衡发电和消费所需的灵活性。电力消费者和他们使用的许多电器天生就具有灵活性，例如，人们可以推迟洗衣服。这项工作的前提是，总的来说，消费者可以像火力发电厂一样提供灵活性。然而，这种灵活性很难被理解、建模或量化。我们提出的研究计划是寻求调查这种灵活性，并正式研究其在电力系统中的应用。从长远来看，我们的目标是帮助建立一个严格的需求灵活性理论，以及它的模型、方法，最重要的是，它的适用性边界。这项研究的具体重点是开发方法来估计和描述聚合灵活消费者的灵活性潜力，显示消费者的行动如何以及在什么条件下可以聚合以提供有用的服务，以支持电网及其用户，并在低碳发电的背景下。由于固有的柔性电加热的重要性，加拿大的消费者可能是世界上最灵活的。大多数加拿大人拥有一种隐藏的资源，值得更好地了解和评估，特别是因为它可能极大地促进电力部门的脱碳，同时提高其可靠性和经济性。

Mitigating the consequences of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving our energy security present great challenges. This is especially the case for the electricity industry as classic fully-controllable coal and gas-fired power plants are bound to be replaced partly by clean wind and solar generation, which unfortunately lack the means to regulate their own power output. Most classic power stations are generally flexible because they can change their power output at will to meet the changing demand for electricity and to counter unpredicted events like equipment failures on the grid. Industrialized and increasingly digital economies are clearly not willing to sacrifice their reliable electricity supply in spite of a shift in the composition of the electricity generation mix. This motivates the search for potentially new solutions to provide the needed flexibility to balance electricity generation and consumption. Electricity consumers and many of their appliances are inherently flexible as, for example, one can delay doing the laundry. The premise of this work is that consumers, on aggregate, can provide flexibility just like thermal power plants. This flexibility is poorly understood, modelled or quantified, however. The research program we are proposing is seeking to investigate that flexibility and formally study its use in power systems. In the long run, we aim to help set up a rigorous theory of demand flexibility and its use with its models, methodologies and, most importantly, boundaries of its applicability. The specific focus of this research is on developing methods to estimate and to characterize the flexibility potential of aggregated flexible consumers, showing how and under what conditions consumers' actions can aggregate to provide useful services in support of the grid and its users and in a context of low-carbon generation. Consumers in Canada are potentially some of the most flexible in the world because of the importance of inherently flexible electric heating. Most Canadians own a hidden resource which deserves to be better understood and assessed, especially since it may greatly contribute to catalyze the decarbonization of the electricity sector while improving its reliability and economics.