Chilled Water Thermal Storage System and Demand Response at the University of California at Merced

Abstract

University of California at Merced is a unique campus that has benefited from intensive efforts to maximize energy efficiency, and has participated in a demand response program for the past two years. Campus demand response evaluations are often difficult because of the complexities introduced by central heating and cooling, non-coincident and diverse building loads, and existence of a single electrical meter for the entire campus. At the University of California at Merced, a two million gallon chilled water storage system is charged daily during off-peak price periods and used to flatten the load profile during peak demand periods, further complicating demand response scenarios. The goal of this research is to study demand response savings in the presence of storage systems in a campus setting. First, University of California at Merced is described and its participation in a demand response event during 2008 is detailed. Second, a set of demand response strategies were pre-programmed into the campus control system to enable semi-automated demand response during a 2009 event, which is also evaluated. Finally, demand savings results are applied to the utility’s DR incentives structure to calculate the financial savings under various DR programs and tariffs

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