Physical modeling of electro-thermal domestic heating systems with quantification of economic and environmental costs

Electro-thermal domestic heating systems represent excellent potential sources for demand response and demand side flexibility given the large amount of storage inherent in them. However, they must be modeled using an approach which adequately captures the detailed physics of the problem (in order to properly assess the different sources of inherent storage), and yet is simple enough to be generalizable to any building and heating type that could be available in the future. This paper presents a comprehensive physical modeling approach for electro-thermal domestic heating systems, in which space heating demand derived from the physical modeling approach is combined with domestic hot water and electricity demand to demonstrate how quantification of economic and environmental costs of different domestic heating systems as well as of the thermal inertia of different components (for future demand response studies) may be undertaken. © 2013 IEEE.