Demand Side Response: Drivers, Challenges, and Opportunities

Abstract

With the worldwide government thrust towards reducing carbon footprints, low-carbon technologies such as renewable generations, electric vehicles, and energy storage are encouraged to integrate with existing power systems. Intermittent nature of renewables increases system planning uncertainty and negatively impacts the operation of network infrastructure. In such a scenario, demand-side management has become an essential tool to reduce peak demand and thus facilitate the utilities efficient system operation. Demand response is one of the main activities of demand-side management. This paper presents an extensive literature review on demand-side response concepts and drivers originating requirement of demand flexibility. A comprehensive classification of various demand response schemes based on economic, technical, and technology triggers is presented. Demand-side response encourages users to modify their consumption during peak demand of the system. In the future, various demand response schemes could investigate grid behavior and thus contributes significantly to grid stability and investment saving.