Demand Response from Residential Consumers: Potentials, Barriers, and Solutions

Abstract

The major goal of the power industry is to serve the demand of electricity consumers as reliable as possible but at an affordable cost. Toward the goal, however, the industry faces substantial barriers such as aging infrastructures, growing demand, and limited budgets for reinforcements. A great portion of infrastructures which were built decades ago need to be retired. The growing demand needs system reinforcement and expansion. These, in turn, require considerable amounts of investment which is in contradiction with highly limited budget of the power industry. This critical situation forces the industry to utilize the existing system more efficiently and wisely. To this end, the concept of smart grid has been recently proposed by the area researchers to enhance the performance of power systems. Smart grid refers to an electricity grid which is equipped with advanced technologies dedicated to managing the system in a sustainable, reliable, and economic manner. Smart grids have several aspects which have to be thoroughly investigated before their implementation in the real world. Demand response is one of the key integral parts of a smart grid. It refers to any voluntary change in electricity usage in response to signals from the grid operator. Demand response provides system operators with an opportunity to modify the normal consumption pattern when electricity procurement prices are higher, or service reliability is jeopardized. The focus of this chapter is on potential impacts of demand response on the operation of power systems. Although demand response may have significant impacts on generation and transmission levels, its impacts on the operation of distribution networks are studied here. This is due to the fact that distribution networks have captured the least attention and experienced the minimum advancements during the past decades, and thus, they are the appropriate place to be improved when efficiency enhancement is the objective. The first and foremost goal of this chapter is to quantify potential benefits of demand response to distribution network operation. To do so, brief definition of demand response is followed by explanations about different demand response programs. Then, demand response benefits are counted. Thereafter, a distribution network hosting several residential customers is utilized to quantify the benefits of demand response in the operation of distribution networks. Disaggregated load profiles associated with residential customers and their flexibility are employed to modify the total load profile. Then, by applying the modified load profile to the network, impacts of demand response on the network losses, voltage profiles, and loading levels are studied. It is demonstrated that even activating demand response potential of a portion of customers can lead to significant improvements in the parameters. Finally, demand response barriers and associated solutions are described.