The new role of night storage heaters in residential demand side management

Electric night storage heaters (NSHs) were once used as the earliest form of residential demand side management in Germany. However, today NSHs are considered expensive and inefficient. Still, as the share of renewable energies in the German electricity production increases and the challenge of matching electricity production and consumption arises, the potential and usage of NSH for demand side management is reconsidered. Therefore, in this analysis the heat supply of an existing building with NSHs is analyzed by comparing the traditional operation with a scenario of NSHs coupled with a photovoltaic system and another scenario in which the NSHs receives signals indicating overproduction of renewable electricity in Germany. It is found, that for the market situation of the year 2020, the primary energy demand and resulting CO2 emission of a NSH can be reduced by up to 30 % and costs can be lowered by almost 19 % if the system is charged at times of high RE generation.