Demand response and smart grids—A survey

In the past two decades, interest in demand response (DR) schemes has grown exponentially. The need for DR has been driven by sustainability (environmental and socioeconomic) and cost-efficiency. The main premise of DR is to influence the timing and magnitude of consumption to match energy supply by sharing the benefits with consumers, ultimately aiming to optimize generation cost. As such, the first and primary enabler to DR was the establishment of contemporary electricity markets. Increased proliferation of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) and microgeneration further motivated the participation of consumers as active players in the market, popularizing DR and the wider category of Demand-Side Management (DSM) programs. Smart Grids (SG) have been an enabler to modern DR schemes, with smart metering data providing input to the underlying optimization and forecasting tools. The more recent emergence of the Internet of Energy (IoE), seen as the evolution of SG, is driven by increased Internet of Things (IoT)-enabling and high penetration of scalable and distributed energy resources. In this IoE paradigm being a fully decentralized network of energy prosumers, DR will continue to be a vital aspect of the grid in future Transactive Energy (TE) schemes, aiming for a more user-centered, energy-efficient, cost-saving, energy management approach. This paper investigates original motives and identifies the first mentions of DR in the legislative and scientific literature. Afterwards, the evolution of DR is tracked over the past four decades, attempting to study the co-influence of legislation and research by performing a thorough statistical analysis of research trends on the IEEE Xplore digital library. Finally, conclusions are made as to the current state of DR and future prospects of DR are discussed.

Energy management has enhanced sustainability, dependability, and efficiency in smart grids. Urbanisation, technology, and consumer behaviour have boosted need for innovative power use and price control systems. The paper intends to construct ML for smart grid power use and price prediction. This work used an advanced shark smell-tuned flexible support vector machine (ASS-FSVM) to forecast smart grid price and power use. Weather stations, smart meters, and market price databases document power use and pricing. The quality and consistency of data are enhanced via the processes of cleaning and normalizing inputs. PCA reduces dimensionality by extracting pre-processed data characteristics. Optimized and tested FSVM models can anticipate smart grid power use and pricing. ASS may identify the most important dataset properties. The research evaluates electricity consumption forecasting using accuracy (98.05%), recall (98.93%), precision (97.10%), and F1-score (98.04%), and electricity price predicting using MAPE (4.32%), RMSE (5.80%), MSE (8.50%), and MAE (2.95%). The recommended strategy greatly increases forecast accuracy, helping utilities improve grid stability, demand responsiveness, and customer pricing.

Demand Response (DR) is an important ingredient of the emerging Smart Grid paradigm. Although much of the DR emerging under Smart Grid is targeted at the distribution level, DR programs are regarded as important elements for reliable and economic operation of the transmission system and the wholesale markets. In the context of Energy and Ancillary Service markets facilitated by the ISOs/RTOs, DR programs may be broadly classified as market-based or reliability-based depending on the conditions under which DR is deployed: The former provide for DR vis-a-vis economic signals, while the latter are generally triggered under emergency conditions. Depending on the ISO/RTO market design and applicable operational standards, the market products DR can offer may include Energy, Reserve Ancillary Services (i.e., Supplemental/Non-spinning Reserve, Spinning/Responsive Reserve, or Regulating Reserve), and Capacity. In this paper we first explore different facets of Demand Response under the Smart Grid paradigm. We then briefly summarize the existing and evolving Demand Response programs at different ISOs/RTOs and the product markets they can participate in. We conclude by addressing some of the challenges and potential solutions for implementation of DR under Smart Grid and Market paradigms.

To meet increasing demand worldwide for electricity, efforts are underway to augment today's electrical grid infrastructure with enhanced information technology (IT), creating a Smart Grid capable of advanced monitoring, information exchange, analytics, and control. Because of the nature of the electrical grid, the stakeholders that control and use it, and the interconnectedness of proposed IT solutions, Smart Grid is a system-of-systems (SoS) that warrants new approaches to design. In this paper, the Relational-Oriented Systems Engineering and Technology Tradeoff Analysis (ROSETTA) Environment is assessed in light of Smart Grid system-of-systems (SoS) design. The specific example considered is a demand response (DR) problem of monitoring and leveling peak electricity demand. DR is first presented as an SoS design problem, comprising multiple, managerially independent systems (both human and technical) and subject to a variety of scenarios. Through discussion of the DR example, the intent and structure of ROSETTA is elucidated and initially considered for relevance to Smart Grid SoS design decisions.

In this paper, we consider the problem of distributed load shedding optimization for disaster recovery in smart grids. We develop distributed second-order interior-point based load shedding algorithms that enjoy a fast quadratic convergence rate. Our main contributions are two-fold: (i) We propose a rooted spanning tree based reformulation that enables our distributed algorithm design; (ii) Based on the spanning tree reformulation, we design distributed computation schemes for our proposed second-order interior-point based load shedding. Collectively, these results serve as an important first step in load shedding and disaster recovery that uses second-order distributed techniques.

The management of electrical power networks during peak load periods is a an issue of growing concern in the context of the transition to the smart grid. This paper presents an overview of solutions to deal with peak load constraints by implementing demand side management solutions. Demand response has been experimented on an office building site, in the GreenLys smart grid demonstration project. A case study of the experimental campaign, with associated results will be presented. Finally, concluding remarks on the benefits of demand response and future perspectives will be exposed.

In smart grid, customers have access to the electricity consumption and the price data via smart meters; thus, they are able to participate in the demand response (DR) programs. In this paper, we address the interaction among multiple utility companies and multiple customers in smart grid by modeling the DR problem as two noncooperative games: the supplier and customer side games. In the first game, supply function bidding mechanism is employed to model the utility companies’ profit maximization problem. In the proposed mechanism, the utility companies submit their bids to the data center, where the electricity price is computed and is sent to the customers. In the second game, the price anticipating customers determine optimal shiftable load profile to maximize their daily payoff. The existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium in the mentioned games are studied and a computationally tractable distributed algorithm is designed to determine the equilibrium. Simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed DR method in increasing the utility companies’ profit and customers’ payoff, as well as in reducing the peak-to-average ratio in the aggregate load demand. Finally, the algorithm performance is compared with a DR method in the literature to demonstrate the similarities and differences.

Smart meters provide fine-grained power usage profiles of consumers to various utility providers, thus facilitating multiple grid functionalities such as load monitoring, Real-Time Pricing (RTP), demand response, and so on. However, information leakage from such usage profiles reveals consumers’ private day-to-day life patterns and their home presence/absence, as the state-of-the-art metering strategies lack adequate security and privacy measures. Since Smart grid communication infrastructure supports low bandwidth, it prohibits the usage of computation-intensive cryptographic solutions. Among different privacy-preserving smart meter streaming methods, data manipulation techniques can easily be implemented in smart meters and do not require installing any storage devices or alternative energy sources. For this purpose, Differential Privacy (DP) is widely adopted in the literature due to its solid mathematical foundation. However, the effect of such manipulations on the RTP control is worth exploring since pricing signals operate in a closed-loop between consumers and utilities. This brings up the privacy-utility tradeoff problem between the user’s achieved privacy and the performance of the pricing loop of Smart grids, an area where the characterization between privacy and pricing control performance is not yet established. We analytically highlight such privacy-utility tradeoff in the closed-loop RTP systems in terms of achieved privacy and the overall generation scheduling errors. We utilize the notion of \(w\) -event privacy and present a RTP aware DP scheme that promises strong user privacy and guarantees pricing signal stabilization irrespective of the privacy level of the DP mechanism. Finally, we show the efficiency and robustness of our scheme by performing extensive experimental validation on MATLAB and, subsequently, on an in-house smart meter test bed.

The global upsurge in research of smart grid and demand response (DR) is opening up new opportunities and challenges to China's power industry in recent years. The smart grid emphasize the interaction with user particularly, including the information interaction and power interaction, which are achieved through the deployment of various types of DR programs. Meanwhile, the development of smart grid also depends on demand response mechanism in the open market environment. DR coincides with the goal of smart grid which is to achieve a high-security, economical, reliable and efficient power system. So the collaboration between smart grid and demand response is talked in this paper. First,we analyze the relationship between smart grid and demand response systematically.Second,the development conditions of DR project in China and abroad are expounded. Furthermore, the necessity and significance of pushing DR project into smart grid is discussed and summarized, finally, methods and suggestions for achieving the collaboration are presented. (4 pages)

An efficient dependable smart power grid relies on the secure real-time data collection and transmission service provided by a monitoring system. In such a system, the measuring units, such as phasor measurement units (PMUs) and smart meters (SMs), are critical. These measuring equipments function as sensors in the smart grid. Data exchanges between these sensors and the central controller are protected by various security protocols. These protocols usually contain computationally intensive cryptographic algorithms that cause heavy energy overhead to the sensor nodes. Since PMUs and SMs are mostly energy-constrained, the problem of how to ensure the secure communication with minimum energy cost becomes a critical issue for the functionality of the whole smart grid. In this article, we focus on the low power secure communication of the PMUs and SMs. We take two wireless sensor platforms as examples to experimentally investigate the approaches and principles of reconciling the two conflicting system requirements-communication security and low energy consumptions. The proposed methods are general ones and applicable to other energy-constrained yet security sensitive systems.

Power systems have been undergoing radical changes in recent years, and their planning and operation will be surely undertaken according to the Smart Grid (SG) vision in the near future. The SG initiatives aim at introducing new technologies and services in power systems, to make the electrical networks more reliable, efficient, secure and environmentally-friendly. In particular, it is expected that communication technologies, computational intelligence and distributed energy sources will be widely used for the whole power system in an integrated fashion. In particular, nowadays, unprecedented challenges like as stringent regulations, environmental concerns, growing demand for high quality, reliable electricity and rising customer expectations are forcing utilities to rethink about electricity generation and delivery from the bottom up. Moreover, the availability of low cost computing and telecommunications technologies, new generation options, and scalable, modular automation systems push utilities to be dynamic, innovative and ambitious enough to take advantage of them. Driven by the dynamics of the new energy environment, leading utilities, technology vendors and government organizations have created a vision of the next generation of energy delivery systems: the Smart Grid. Operational changes of the grid, caused by restructuring of the electric utility industry and electricity storage technology advancements, have created an opportunity for storage systems to provide unique services to the evolving grid. Especially Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs), thanks to the large number and variety of services they can provide, are powerful tools for the solution of some challenges that future grids will face. This consideration makes BESSs critical components of the future grids. The BESS can be applied for different services into the different levels of power system chain to satisfy technical challenges and provide financial benefits. In the context of the application of BESSs in SGs, there are two main problems that need to be addressed in a way that exploits the BESS potential, that are linked to their operation and sizing. This thesis focuses on both these aspects, proposing new strategies that allow optimizing the BESS adoption. When dealing with BESSs, sizing and operation are strictly linked. The correct sizing of a BESS, in fact, needs to take into account its operation which in turn will be effected with the aim of optimizing the whole system where it is included. In the first part of this research study, advanced optimal operating strategies were proposed for BESSs by considering both the distribution system operator perspective and the end user. Thus, the proposed operating strategies were performed with the aim of (i) leveling the active power requested by the loads connected to a distribution system (distribution system operator service), (ii) reducing the electricity costs sustained by an end-use costumer that provides demand response (DR) (end user service) and (iii) scheduling a microgrid (µG) with DR resources such as Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs) and Data Centers (DCs) (both the two section service). The proposed strategies also satisfied technical constraints of BESSs and other components of the µG. The second part of the thesis presented the optimal sizing of BESSs aimed at maximizing the benefits related to their use. In the thesis, the sizing, which is performed by considering the end user point of view with reference to both the industrial and residential customers, is effected by adopting both deterministic and probabilistic approaches. With reference to the deterministic approach, a simple and quick closed form procedure for the sizing of BESSs in residential and industrial applications was proposed. In case of probabilistic approach, the case of a BESS installed in an industrial facility was considered and the sizing was performed based on the decision theory. Technical improvements and economic benefits of optimal operation and optimal sizing of BESSs in SG are demonstrated by the obtained results which are reported in the numerical applications. More specifically, it was clearly determined that BESSs can offer technical supports into the distribution operator section of the grid in terms of load management and security challenges. Moreover optimal integration of BESSs into the grid was also appealing for end users thanks to valuable amounts of electricity bill cost reduction. Regarding the original contribution of the thesis, the following considerations can be done. With reference to the load leveling service, an innovative two-step procedure (day-ahead scheduling and very short time predictive control) was proposed which optimally controls a BESS connected to a distribution substation in order to perform load leveling. In case of DR, a proper control of the BESS was proposed in order to perform DR under different price schemes, such as Real Time Pricing (RTP) and Time of Use (TOU) without modifying the daily work cycle of the industrial loads. The control procedure allows achieving contemporaneously two important goals that are the reduction of the bill costs and the prolonging the battery's lifetime so further reducing the costs sustained by the customer. With reference to the scheduling of microgrids, the original contribution of the thesis is focused on the proposal of optimization strategies aimed at managing and coordinating, simultaneously, batteries on board of vehicles or equipping data centers' Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) and Distributed Generation (DG) units. Also comparisons among different single-objective based strategies are made in order to highlight the most convenient. With reference to the sizing based on deterministic approach, unlike the other relating literature, the innovative contribution is that the closed form procedure takes into account both the technical constraints of the battery and contractual agreements between the customer and the utility. Moreover, in the economical analysis performed for the sizing, which is applied with reference to both residential and small industrial customers and is based on actual TOU tariffs, a wide sensitivity analysis to consider different perspectives in terms of life span and future costs was performed. Some aspects that affect the profitability of the battery, such as technological limitations (e.g. the battery and converter efficiency), economic barriers (e.g. capital cost and the rate of change of the cost) and variation of the load profile along the years were deeply analyzed. In case of sizing based on probabilistic approach, the original contributions of the thesis are mainly referred to the proposal of a new method that uses a decision theory-based process to obtain the best sizing alternative considering the various uncertainties affecting the sizing procedure. The thesis is organized in three chapters which are dealing with integration of BESSs in SGs. The first chapter reports basic concepts and characteristics of BESSs, fundamental components and features of SGs and different services that BESSs can provide. The optimal operation strategies of BESS are considered in second chapter which includes their problem formulation, solving procedures and results. The third chapter deals with the optimal sizing problem of BESSs for which the problem formulation, solving procedures and results are reported. Finally, the conclusions are presented in the last part of thesis.

The vision of smart grids lie in large scale, distributed electrical power systems, equipped with communication and information technologies for automated and sustainable electricity production and distribution. Smart grids require communication with individual energy consumers for enabling energy providers to create a control-feedback loop using time-dependent pricing. Emerging broadband wireless networks hold the key in providing this efficient communication between energy consumers and smart power grids. In this paper we first propose the use of LTE multicast between the aggregator and energy consumers for efficient demand-response management in smart grids. We formulate the multicast scheduling and resource allocation problem for optimal SG-DR programs and provide a greedy solution. Performance analysis and OMNET++ simulation results, using data from Korean power corporation, demonstrate that our proposed LTE multicast and MBSFN solutions are capable of providing low latency (≤ 40ms) and packet drop (≤ 6%), thus resulting in almost 25% shift in peak energy load and up to 30% reduction in energy production cost.

Reducing the power supply-demand gap and increasing reliability of power supply are the challenges of current energy management. Implementation of smart grid, smart meters and smart metering can be a possible solution for power demand reduction, efficient power supply management, and optimization of management resource usages. Smart meters include sophisticated measurement and calculation hardware, software, calibration and communication capabilities. For interoperability within a smart grid infrastructure, smart meters are designed to perform functions, and store and communicate data according to certain standards. In this work we discuss smart meter and various elements of smart metering, current state of the technologies related to smart grid, smart meter, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), and meter data flow in smart grid. We also discuss standards related to smart meter, meter data format and data transmission, functions of smart meter, and functionalities of smart meters, currently deployed by utilities around the world.

A smart grid will integrate extensive distributed resources such as local generation sources, Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) and demand response (DR) programs. By using smart metering, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) facilitates consumer participation in DR programs and changes the consumption pattern of residential user via tariff schemes for electrical energy. In addition, the smart grid will play an important role in controlling and coordinating of PHEVs charging or discharging activities. In this paper, an optimization technique is used, in order to minimizing a retailer energy cost. The retailer controls charging or discharging of PHEVs during a day and considers the impact of time variant tariff schemes on customer behavior. The behavior of customer is modeled by means of economic demand models.

Smart grid (SG) is an efficient electrical grid that provides opportunities to manage the energy load in a reliable and efficient way. Moreover, smart meters (SMs) are introduced, which play a vital role in communication between homes and SG. SMs manage and monitor the energy consumption of homes. SGs and SMs produce a big data, which is very hard to store and process even with cloud computing. For this purpose fog computing concept is introduced, which provides a good environment for computing and storing the data of SGs and SMs before transmitting them to cloud. The concept of fog computing, acts as a bridge between cloud and SGs. In this paper, a cloud-fog based architecture is integrated with SG for efficient energy management of buildings with SMs. To manage the energy requirements of consumers, micro grids (MGs) are available near to the buildings. Fogs are distributed over the world, overhaul the cloud via important features, including low latency and increased security for MGs. To balance the load on cloud and fogs, three load balancing algorithms are used. These algorithms are round robin (RR), throttled and greedy. Closest datacenter policy is used to compare their results. Greedy gives better results than RR and throttled.