Flexible Demand Resource Pricing Scheme: A Stochastic Benefit-Sharing Approach

With the rapidly increased penetration of renewable generations, the incentive-based demand-side management (DSM) shows great value in alleviating the uncertainty and providing flexibility for a microgrid. However, how to price those demand resources becomes one of the most significant challenges for promoting the incentive-based DSM under microgrid environments. In this article, a flexible demand resource pricing scheme is proposed. Instead of using the utility function of end-users like most existing literature, the economic benefit of the flexible demand resources is evaluated by the operation performance enhancement of the microgrid, and correspondingly, the resource is priced based on a benefit-sharing approach. An iteration-based chance-constrained method is established to calculate the economic benefit and shared compensation for the demand resource providers. Meanwhile, the financial risks for the microgrid operator due to uncertain factors are mitigated by the chance-constrained criterion. The proposed scheme is examined by an experimental microgrid to illustrate its effectiveness.