Assessing the value of demand response in microgrids

Abstract

This paper presents a computer application for assisting decisions about sustainability enhancement due to the effect of shifting demand from less favorable periods to ones more convenient on the operation of a microgrid. Specifically, assessing how the decisions affect the economic participation of the aggregating agent of the microgrid bidding in an electricity day-head market. The aggregating agent must manage microturbines, wind systems, photovoltaic systems, energy storage systems, and loads, facing besides the load uncertainty further uncertainties due to usage of renewable sources of energy and participation in the day-ahead market. These uncertainties cannot get rid of in the decision making, therefore requiring a proper formulation and the proposed approach customizes a stochastic programming problem for this operation. Case studies show that under these uncertainties and the shifting of demand to convenient periods there are opportunity decisions with significant enhancements on the expected profit. These enhancements are due to better bidding in the day-ahead market and shifting of energy consumption in periods of favorable market prices for exporting energy. The case studies are in favor of allowing to conclude the usefulness of the proposed approach for the operation of a microgrid.