How will the benefits be achieved? How is peak avoided with smart water heaters?

Smart water heaters connected to our smart grid will allow us to make subtle adjustments to energy demand in ways customers will never notice.

Smart water heaters connected to our smart grid will allow us to make subtle adjustments to energy demand in ways customers will never notice. The smart grid allows us to forecast when peak demand would occur so we can make changes across the system to avoid it. 

“This orchestration by the smart grid smooths out the demand and avoids the peak altogether.”

Water heaters can be a big draw on our system – accounting for more than 30 per cent of the household energy consumption.

Let’s say a peak demand was expected at 7 a.m. tomorrow – among the changes we could make to mitigate it would be to ensure everyone’s water was heated up no later than 6:30 a.m.  and then not reheat the water until after the peak has passed. 

At the same time, this orchestration by the smart grid smooths out the demand and avoids the peak altogether. It also means our wholesale supplier of electricity will be able to cut the amount of fossil fuel generators to serve the demand, and reduce the associated carbon emissions.