Increased power flexibility in the power system supports the efficient integration of large amount of the fluctuating power generation from wind and solar. Flexibility in the demand and controllability of the consumption are of high value. Even at appliance level, if the quantity of controllable units is high enough. One challenge of control of small-scale (100 W) appliances in households is that the solution must be simple, cheap and automatic. Another challenge is that the responses depend on the user's behaviour.

Many devices in one package

The core of the project is a relative large field experiment, involving more than 1.000 power customers, randomly selected among SE’s power customers, and with remote control of their fridges. The customers joining the project received a package with a power switch unit, to be installed at the power supply to the fridge, a temperature sensor unit, to be installed in the cold room of the fridge, a user interface unit, to be installed next to the fridge, and a communication unit, to be connected to the internet. All the units communicate wirelessly via ZigBee. The individual fridges are controlled from a central server at DTU, based on the temperature in the fridges and the requests for power regulations.