Mitigating Electricity a Price Spike under Pre-Cooling Method

Abstract

The growing demand for air-conditioning is one of the largest contributors to Australia overall electricity consumption. This has started to create peak load supply problems for some electricity utilities particularly in Queensland. This research aimed to develop a consumer demand side response model to assist electricity consumers to mitigate peak demand on the electrical network. The proposed model allows consumers to independently and proactively manage air conditioning peak electricity demand. The main contribution of this research is how to show consumers can mitigate peak demands by optimizing energy costs for air conditioning in a several cases such as no spike and spike considering to the probability spike cases may only occur in the middle of the day for half hour, one hour and one and half hour spikes. This model also investigates how air conditioning applied a pre-cooling method when there is a substantial risk of a price spike. The results indicate the potential of the scheme to achieve energy savings and reducing electricity bills (costs) to the consumer. The model was tested with the Queensland electricity market data from Australian Energy Market Operator and Brisbane temperature data from Bureau statistic during hot days.