Decentralized demand response for temperature-constrained appliances

The evolution of the power grid towards the so-called Smart Grid, where information technologies help improve the efficiency of electricity production, distribution and consumption, allows to use the fine-grained control brought by the Internet of Things capabilities to perform distributed demand response when requested by the grid. In this paper, we study the demand-response potential of coordinated large numbers of appliances which have to maintain some temperature within a fixed range through the ON/OFF functioning of a temperature modifier. We introduce a mathematical model and methods to coordinate appliances with given requirements, in order to offer a global energy demand reduction for a desirable duration while still satisfying the temperature constraints, and with limited communication overhead. We quantify the maximum power reduction that can be attained, as a function of the reduction duration asked by the grid.