Flexibility Scheduling for Large Customers

Large customers are considered as major flexible electricity demands which can reduce their electricity costs by choosing appropriate strategies to participate in demand response programs. However, practical methods to aid the large customers for handling the complex decision making process for participating in the programs have remained scarce. This paper proposes a novel decision-making tool for enabling large customers to determine how they adjust their electricity usage from normal consumption patterns in expectation of gaining profit in response to changes in prices and incentive payments offered by the system operators. The proposed model, formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming problem, simultaneously determines the optimal integration of the flexibility options including shifting demand and utilizing onsite generation and energy storage systems, along with energy procurement from the grid that allows the large customers to optimize their energy portfolio from different sources including bilateral contracts and the market. The characteristics of the proposed integrated flexibility scheduling and energy procurement model and its benefits are investigated through several case studies conducted on a test large industrial load.