Evaluation of the energy model of a horizontally-mounted electric water heater through internal temperature measurement
Date
2017
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Abstract
The resource-constraint energy sector faces an insatiable demand for energy, which necessitates improvements in efficiency. One key sector that has potential for savings is residential water heating, which makes up 32% of household energy. Previous studies have proven that with effective scheduling up to 29% savings can be achieved for a nominal consumption pattern. The model that was used to estimate the savings, calculates the energy usage for a given hot water consumption pattern and given heating schedule for a horizontally mounted water heater. This two-node model is used to aid user-informed scheduling and auto- scheduling, but was developed as a black-box model, validating the energy and not the internal temperatures, which could be misleading. This paper evaluates the accuracy of the model by performing temperature measurements inside the horizontal electric water heater. Moreover, two aspects neglected by the model are investigated: The node state transfer usage threshold, and the inter-nodal thermal resistance. The results show that the model significantly underestimates the stratification that occurs naturally. This underestimation also severely affects the modelled energy consumption and hides limitations of the model, preferring a lower threshold and higher inter-nodal resistance. The results also show that Legionella growth in the EWH could be a concern despite a high set point.
Description
CITATION: Leeuwner, L. L., et al. 2017. Evaluation of the energy model of a horizontally-mounted electric water heater through internal temperature measurement. In IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies - Asia (ISGT-Asia), 4-7 December 2017, Auckland, New Zealand, doi:10.1109/ISGT-Asia.2017.8378365.
The original publication is available at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org
The original publication is available at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org
Keywords
Electric water heaters
Citation
Leeuwner, L. L., et al. 2017. Evaluation of the energy model of a horizontally-mounted electric water heater through internal temperature measurement. In IEEE Innovative Smart Grid Technologies - Asia (ISGT-Asia), 4-7 December 2017, Auckland, New Zealand.