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thermal storage. In this respect, policy makers and regulators
can play an important role in promoting the deployment of
low-carbon, multi-energy systems by facilitating participation of such systems in grid services markets.
as in most other investment options, but especially when
dealing with the complexity of a multi-energy system, extreme
care needs to be taken at the planning stage to deal with longterm uncertainty, primarily energy prices. stochastic optimization tools are emerging in the literature of multi-energy systems to enable planning flexibility (see Martinez-Cesena et al.,
2016, in the "for further reading" section) and will hopefully
be embraced soon by industry too. In fact, these tools allow
for the management of long-term uncertainties by identifying
an optimal set of investment strategies that can dynamically
respond to changes in the underlying variables, for example,
gas and electricity prices. the ultimate aim is to improve the
business case of high-flexibility, high-efficiency, multi-energy
systems that, besides support heating sector decarbonization,
can also support low-carbon power system operation.

Consumer and Societal Values
the role of the consumer or building owner in the future of
electric heating cannot be understated. Consumer investment
decisions (heat technology, heat distribution system, thermal
storage, and building insulation) and behavior largely determine the shape of the future load curve. Most engineering,
economic, and policy research represents consumers as economic agents and do not consider that consumers' decisions
are largely impacted by noneconomic factors such as convenience, habitual routines, cultural values, and feedback
from acquaintances.
a crucial area of research is understanding consumers' willingness and ability to provide system flexibility or, in other
words, participate in demand response. While technology is
an important enabler of demand response, user engagement
is paramount. to estimate the flexibility potential of demand
response, consumer willingness and the ability to change
behaviors and expectations must also be understood. for a given
heating technology, end users will have varying thermal comfort
expectations that will impact on the realizable flexibility potential from such a resource. It is important that these sociotechnical aspects are considered within the modeling framework when
demand response potential is being explored.

Summary
the electrification of heat is a huge opportunity for europe
to increase energy security and reduce carbon emissions by
shifting away from fossil-fuel sources. However, heat demand
today represents roughly half of the final energy demand in
the eu, which means that efficient electricity system integration will hinge on increasing building energy efficiency and
harnessing heat system flexibility.
Heat can be stored considerably more economically and efficiently than electricity, which also serves to decouple electricity
demand from heat demand by using thermal stores, the thermal
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storage of buildings, and other energy-system integration solutions such as hybrid heaters. these solutions increase system
flexibility and provide investment and operational benefits
across different levels of the electricity system from wholesale
markets to lV feeders. Valuing and remunerating these benefits
will improve the business case for multi-energy systems.
next to efficient grid integration, the future of electric
heating will depend on its capability to present a compelling
business case while at the same time meeting the expectations of consumers for warm homes and hot water.

Acknowledgments
C. o'Dwyer acknowledges support from the european
union Horizon 2020 realValue project under grant agreement no. 646116. p. Mancarella acknowledges the support
of the uK epsrC My-store project (ep/n001974/1).
s. Heinen acknowledges support prior to July 2017 from the
fonds national de la recherche, luxembourg (project reference 6018454) and the Centre for It-Intelligent energy
systems (CItIes) project, Denmark (project reference
1305-00027B/Dsf).

For Further Reading
a. navarro-espinosa and p. Mancarella, "probabilistic modelling and assessment of the impact of electric heat pumps
on low voltage electrical distribution networks," Appl. Energy, vol. 127, pp. 249-266, aug. 2014.
e. a. Martinez-Cesena, t. Capuder, and p. Mancarella,
"flexible distributed multi-energy generation system expansion planning under uncertainty," IEEE Trans. Smart Grid,
vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 348-357, Jan. 2016.
M. Bakhtvar, C andrade-Cabrera, g Buttita, o neu, and
a. Keane, "a study of operation strategy of small scale heat
storage devices in residential distribution feeders," in Proc.
IEEE Power and Energy Society Int. Conf. Innovative Smart
Grid Technologies, turin, Italy, 2017, pp. 1-6.
real value project. (2018). [online]. available: http://
www.realvalueproject.com/
s. Heinen, D. Burke, and M. J. o'Malley, "electricity,
gas, heat integration via residential hybrid heating technologies: an investment model assessment," Energy, vol. 109,
pp. 906-919, May 2016.
s. Heinen, W. turner, l. Cradden, f. McDermott, and M.
o'Malley, "electrification of residential space heating considering coincidental weather events and building thermal
inertia: a system-wide planning analysis," Energy, vol. 127,
pp. 136-154, 2017.

Biographies
Steve Heinen is with Vector ltd., new Zealand.
Pierluigi Mancarella is with university of Melbourne,
australia, and university of Manchester, united Kingdom.
Ciara O'Dwyer is with university College Dublin, Ireland.
Mark O'Malley is with national renewable energy laboratory, united states.
p&e
july/august 2018

http://www.realvalueproject.com/ http://www.realvalueproject.com/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - July/August 2018