New Zealand GREEN Grid household electricity demand study 2014 - 2018 Ben Anderson (@dataknut), Michael Jack & David Eyers These and other questions can now be answered thanks to the release of anonymised electricity power demand data from a sample of around 45 New Zealand households. Figure 4: Seasonal Lighting profiles (mean kW per minute) Figure 3: Seasonal Heat Pump profiles (mean kW per minute) While a few similar datasets have been released in other countries this is a first for New Zealand. Experience in the UK and globally is that releasing datasets leads to unanticipated uses and innovative research with positive benefits. With New Zealand’s rate of smart meter installation leading the way internationally, we need data like this to help train a next generation of analysts and to provoke all stakeholders to come up with secure and equitable ways to create a data-driven smart low-carbon electricity system. The households were recruited in 2014 as part of the Renewable Energy and the Smart Grid (NZ GREEN Grid) project, a collaboration between the Universities of Otago and Canterbury. The sample was divided equally between Hawkes Bay and New Plymouth (Figure 1). Figure 4 on the other hand shows the effect of lighting in each season and suggests that the introduction of LEDs may go some way to offsetting winter peak demand. We have used the data to investigate the potential effects of widespread increases in heat pump, photovoltaic panel (PV) and electric vehicle (EV) charging on electricity networks and also the economic viability of rooftop PV for householders. This work has concluded that flexibility measures which shift the timing of demand could play an important role in avoiding expensive upgrades to the electricity network as well as enabling greater use of variable renewable low-carbon generation. Energy storage such as stand- alone batteries, smart hot water cylinders, and also vehicle-to-grid scenarios with EVs could play a significant role in this. These papers can be found at the link given below. Ongoing research includes an assessment of the technical (maximum) potential for demand response in New Zealand Households and modelling of the value of LED light bulbs in reducing demand. We have now released the data collected from 2014 to 2018 so that students, academics, commercial analysts, government researchers (or anyone else) can use the data to explore questions that the GREEN Grid project does not have the resources to cover. "How much electricity do heat pumps really use in New Zealand households? When is hot water heated and are the lights kept on all day in winter?” Figure 1: Sample size over time Figure 2: Sample data quality Each household was equipped with devices that measure the power carried by each electricity circuit every minute. By monitoring each circuit, the power used for heating hot water can be analysed separately to that for cooking, for space heating or for other uses. As an example, Figure 3 shows the especially high daily peaks in heat pump demand in winter. In New Zealand electricity peaks are currently met by hydro generation, but increased heat pump use may require more fossil-fuel based generation making achieving net zero carbon emissions much more difficult. Get the data: dx.doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-853334 Get the (R) package: github.com/CfSOtago/GREENGridData Data documentation and list of papers to date: cfsotago.github.io/GREENGridData/ GREEN Grid Overview: dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.07.010