| Summary: | Breakthroughs in smart grid technology make it possible to deliver electricity in controlled and intelligent ways to improve energy efficiency between the user and the utility. Demand-side management strategies can reduce overall energy usage and shift consumption to reduce peak loads. Electric water heaters account for 40% of residential energy consumption. Since they are thermal storage devices, advanced control strategies can improve their efficiency. However, existing methods disregard the connection between the user and the grid. We propose a centrally adapted control model that allows for coordinated scheduling to adapt the optimal control schedule of each EWH, spreading the load into off-peak periods to ensure that the grid’s generation capacity is not exceeded. We consider two strategies for the delivery of hot water: temperature matching, and energy matching with <i>Legionella</i> sterilisation, and compare them to a baseline strategy where the thermostat is always switched on. Simulation results for a grid of 77 EWHs showed that an unconstrained peak load of 1.05 kW/EWH can be reduced as low as 0.4 kW/EWH and achieve a median energy saving per EWH of 0.38 kWh/day for the temperature matching strategy and 0.64 kWh/day for the energy matching strategy, without reducing the user’s comfort.
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