Residential Demand Management using Individualised Demand Aware Price Policies

Barry Hayes, Igor Melatti, Toni Mancini, Milan Prodanovic, Enrico Tronci. IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 8(3), pages 1284-1294, 2017.

Barry Hayes, Igor Melatti, Toni Mancini, Milan Prodanovic, Enrico Tronci.
Residential Demand Management using Individualised Demand Aware Price Policies.
IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, 8(3), pages 1284-1294, 2017.
DOI: 10.1109/TSG.2016.2596790

BibTex entry

In light of the increasing penetrations of variable energy resources, and the decreasing contribution from traditional generation sources, i.e. large, controllable thermal generation plants, a number of recent studies have identified a need for new sources of flexibility in electricity networks.

In this article we presented a set of Demand Side Management (DSM) software services which were introduced in our EU FP7 SmartHG project. These services are designed to manage residential end-user energy demand with two objectives: to minimize energy costs for each individual user, and to assist the Distribution System Operator (DSO) in managing network constraints and optimising the operation of the distribution system.

This is achieved by exploiting demand awareness as obtained from smart metering and other Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). One of the unique aspects of the approach introduced in the SmartHG project is that the price policies are “individualised”, e.g. each individual user receives a separate electricity pricing scheme designed to incetivise demand management in order to optimally manage flexible demands. These pricing schemes are designed with the primary objective of reducing the peaks in overall distribution system demand, which has significant benefits for the network and for the DSO. This is achieved in such a way that the average electricity price each individual user receives is non-discriminatory, and the pricing policy is designed to shape the demand without reducing the overall demand volume, which is undesirable from the DSO point of view.

Our 2-layer architecture

Results

  • The proposed methodology is based on two integrated software services:
    • The Electricity Distribution Network Virtual Tomography (EVT) service, aimed at assisting the DSO in the operation and management of the distribution networks. EVT uses available measurements from Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) and smart metering/AMI systems to estimate the network state in real-time using a Weighted Least Squares (WLS) state estimator, and also to carry out network analysis ahead of time. This detects possible violations of network constraints, and raises warnings and alarms to the DSO accordingly. The results of the state estimation and network analysis carried out in the EVT can be used to make operational constraints, limiting the demand drawn at some or all substations s within the distribution network at times of peak demand.
    • The Demand-Aware Price Policy (DAPP) service, designed to redistribute the power demand (load shifting) so that the constraints on the substations s are fulfilled. This is done by computing, for each residential home u connected to s, an individualised suggested power profile Pu (i.e. different users may get different power profiles), so that if all users follow their power profile then the operational constraints on s, as suggested by EVT, are met. Each user u is motivated to follow the suggested power profile Pu by an individualised price policy based on Pu. Proposing individualised price policies avoids the problem of rebound peaks, i.e. where the demand peaks are simply shifted through the day, which may violate operational constraints.
  • The advantages of our 2-layer approach were shown in a real case study (from the SmartHG project) over a suburban/rural 10kV network with a weakly-meshed structure, a peak demand of 3.2 MW (with the largest demands occurring in winter), which serves approximately 1,600 customers.