Delaying Laundry: How can our behavior help with Renewable energy adoption

 

Does renewable energy adoption hold the key to save our planet? Renewable energy production now accounts for 15% of our annual electricity consumption, and it is projected to reach 25% by year 2050, the deadline set by Paris agreement. But why aren’t this number increasing even more? The answer could lie within our electricity consumption behavior.

Our Daily Demand

You wake up, it is a warm summer day, you turn on your phone to check the newest IG stories, your phone have been charging over the night time. 
You turn on the lights and maybe your electric stove and start preparing your breakfast. 
After dressing up, you commute to school. 
On the streets, you see others driving electric cars to work. You are now at school, lights are on in every classroom, maybe air-conditioning as well for places that have it. 
You spent your whole day at school, and now it is 4pm, time to go home. 
You see electric cars roaming the streets again, and once you are home, you turn on the lights and start preparing dinner. 
You open and close your fridge frequently during the preparation, so the compressor of the fridge starts working. 
For some, you would also be doing your laundry now, and homes with electric cars starts charging their cars. 
Of course, you will be charging your phone and maybe turn on your computer as well. 
Time passes, and your laundry have finished, it is time to sleep, your turn off your lights, maybe set your air conditioning to low and head off to your dreams. The next day, the cycle repeats.

In the above story, could you have spotted the consumption pattern? You could see the consumption pattern illustrated in the figure below (it depicts consumption in Canada, but it demonstrates the concept adequately for cities with hot summer and cold winters).

How energy consumption change with time within a day in Canada.  Source: Understanding Electricity Supply and Demand | Let's Talk Science (letstalkscience.ca)

The energy demand varies during a day, from the lowest demand during the night, to the peak in the evenings after work or school. When people arrive back from school or work, they usually use electric kitchen utensils as an electric stove, oven or microwave. They might have to clean their cloths using the laundry machine or just relax watching a series on a TV or computer. All this, thought, is overshadowed by charging an electric car, for those who have one.

These activities spikes electricity demand as we are demanding a lot from the power grid in a short period of time. The consequence is that such peak requires a rapid response from the electric grid to increase their output, this is where the problem occurs.

Problem with Spiking demand and Renewables Sources

UK Electricity demand and Energy supply from difference sources from 02/12/2012 to 20/12/2012. Chart from  Clive Best. Data from BM reports at Elexon Ltd as reported by Gridwatch

In the figure above, the first thing you notice is that most of the energy is supplied by Coal and Gas, and they follow nicely to the demand curve shown in black. These fossil fuel generators can be started on-demand to satisfy peak loads, which is why they are still widely used around the world.

The second thing you notice is how flat the Nuclear power supply is. This is the benefit and pitfall of using nuclear power, you get reliable and stable power generation, but they will always run the background regardless of the load.

Finally, it is the wind power supply, the one option with the highest variability. The power output of wind power could change every hour due to natural phenomena. This poses a great challenge in adopting wind power, as their supply behavior can be unpredictable. You might get lots of generation at down-times while producing close to nothing (as shown in the arrow in the graph) during peak hours. 

So, to supplement that, we need the old and dirty fossil fuel generators. 

However, this poses another challenge, when demand is low, but wind generation is high, we might end up wasting energy as the combination of (non-adjustable) nuclear power and wind power will exceed demand. 

Similarly, in times where demand exceed wind generation and nuclear power, we need to use fossil fuel generators, but activating them could exceed the total power demand as they have a minimum generation limit, so we end up wasting wind power, again.

The same goes for solar power, as shown in the graph below that illustrate how wind and solar generation fluctuates within a day. As you could see, the solar power and wind generation does not match the peaks in load, thus we will risk under supplying if we rely solely on renewable energies.

Energy demand during different times of the year in California compared to wind and solar power generation. Source: Increased solar and wind electricity generation in California are changing net load shapes - Today in Energy - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

Tackling the challenge with dynamic load

So how does delaying your laundry helps the situation. If we cannot control how much electricity is produced by renewable sources throughout the day, then the solution would be to control our electricity consumption. 

Delaying our laundry is part of the larger strategy called Demand Side Management (DSM). 

What it proposes is to adapt our electric demands to the generation available, so that we minimize the need to using fossil fuel generation to supplement base-renewable generation. 

Another effect of using DSM is that it can smooth out the peaks in the demand.

In our story, peak in demand occurs when people all left work/school and head back to their homes. This is because all the electric appliances are turned on all at once. 

But not all appliances need to be turned on at the same moment, for example, heaters/coolers can be turned on an hour before your arrival at home, laundry can be done during the day when energy supply is plenty, electric cars can be charged later at night when electric demand is low, and everyone is asleep. 

These are just some examples of shifting the time of consumption to reduce the peak load.

In fact, companies are now producing smart meters and smart appliances to do all these automatically for you!

Smart meters can provide pricing information in real time that corresponds to the amount of electric supply available. This encourages households to use electricity when it is cheaper and electric supply is most abundant and reduces demand during scarcity.

Smart appliances can utilize the information from smart meters and user’s behavior to schedule the optimal time to do work, like laundry, cooling/heating cycles, charging etc. so that it spaces out the electricity demand for the household. 

By minimizing the fluctuations in our electricity demand and adapting our consumption to the supply, we can then more reliably incorporate renewable energy sources into our electric grids. 

Fluctuations in generation from wind power and solar power will now be compensated through demand adjustments, so fewer fossil fuel generators are needed to handle the demand peaks.

The future of renewable energy lies in optimizing our consumption behavior, so maybe try and use the timer on your laundry machine next time to schedule your washing during the day.