Managing Flexible Loads in Residential Areas

Policy makers foster the use of clean, renewable electricity generators. These mainly decentralized, small units with intermittent output are in conflict with the current power grid control infrastructure. Demand response, the active participation of the demand side, is a promising option for efficient and reliable operation of future power systems. Today, demand response programs focus mainly on large industrial customers. Yet, the large number of households should also be tapped into demand response, particularly, since highly flexible loads in residential areas are expected to increase (e.g., electric vehicles or stationary batteries). Consequently, demand response potentials need to be addressed and appropriate mechanisms to coordinate a large number of small flexible units need to leverage. This work concentrates initially on building appropriate models for demand response analysis and elaborates an accurate representation of customer reactions in smart grids. The model is then used to evaluate potentials of two distinct demand response scenarios—direct load control and price-based incentives. Under direct load control an aggregator can combine flexible loads and intermittent renewable energy sources into one portfolio to increase load coverage with renewable generation. A large amount of flexible customers in a portfolio is not necessarily sufficient to balance load and generation. It turns out that for demand scheduling electric vehicles and storage heaters are the most promising devices and on the supply side an equally balanced wind and photovoltaic mix leads to the lowest procurement costs for the aggregator. Furthermore, direct load control models facilitate the determination of key properties for load flexibility. The analysis suggests that load balancing potentials are mainly influenced by electricity consumption and shifting distance of a device. Scheduling restrictions have limited effect.