Abstract
The impressive advantages offered by of demand-side participation have accelerated deployment of demand response (DR) programs. However, the first step to attain the benefits of DR programs is to increase awareness level of the customers. This paper proposes a simple-but-efficient platform to enlighten the costumers on manifested merits of demand-side load control. The proposed platform is a web-based application which acquires the load profile of the customer, associated flexible appliances, and the customer preferences for using the appliances. In turn, presents the optimal operation schedule for flexible appliances and attained benefits from using the optimal schedule. To calculate the optimal operation schedule, a mixed-integer linear optimization model is devised where the decision variables are settings of flexible appliances, charge/discharge status and amount of storage device, charge/discharge status, and amount of electrical vehicle. The devised optimization engine is linked to a database to acquire required data for optimization which encompasses historical data for customer load, forecasts of renewables, ratings of customers' flexible appliances, and subjected energy tariff. The attained optimal scheduling for the customer is then returned to the database. On the other hand, the database is linked to the web-based user interface to get the user preferences (write to the database) and represent the recommendation for optimal operation and attained benefits (read from database). To manage the links between web-based user interface, database, and optimization tool, proper linking application programming interfaces (APIs) are devised. The proposed platform is testified using real-world data and its effectiveness is assured by experimental studies.
Highlights
The manifested merits of demand-side participation have given rise to significant interest on demand response (DR) programs
Various DR programs have been upheld by power system operators to promote the active contribution of demand-side entities and harvest associated benefits [2]
A DR aggregator builds a bridge between independent system operator (ISO) and retail customers and takes the responsibility of aggregating and managing customer responses [4]
Summary
The manifested merits of demand-side participation have given rise to significant interest on demand response (DR) programs. The proposed approach acquires the end-user’s profiles pertaining to on-site generation, i.e. renewable-based generation, and consumption, i.e. fixed and flexible load; in turn, the platform represents the cost difference between user-preferred and optimal scheduling pertaining to flexible appliance such as dishwasher, washer & dryer, pump, storage device, and EV. For the proposed optimization model, the amount of power traded with the community aggregator, and operation time of the flexible appliances are considered as the main decision variables. Based on the selected date and preferences offered by the user, the devised API extract the corresponding data from the database, load the data to the optimization model, execute the optimization engine, and write the results to the database. Detailed design and formulation of the layers are presented in the following
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