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Optimal Design of Price Based Demand Response Programs in Distribution Networks

Safdarian, Amir | 2014

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  1. Type of Document: Ph.D. Dissertation
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 46242 (05)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Electrical Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Fotuhi-Firuzabad, Mahmud; Lehtonen, Matti
  7. Abstract:
  8. The major goal of the power industry is to serve the demand of electricity consumers as reliable as possible but at an affordable cost. Towards the goal, however, the industry faces substantial barriers such as aging infrastructures, growing demand, and limited budgets for reinforcements. A great portion of infrastructures which were built decades ago need to be retired. The growing demand needs system reinforcement and expansion. These, in turn, require considerable amounts of investment which is in contradiction with highly limited budget of the power industry. This critical situation forces the industry to utilize the existing system more efficiently and wisely. To this end, the concept of smart grid has been recently proposed by the area researchers to enhance the performance of power systems. Smart grid refers to an electricity grid which is equipped with advanced technologies dedicated to manage the system in a sustainable, reliable, and economic manner. Smart grids have several aspects which have to be thoroughly investigated before their implementation in the real world. Demand response is one of the key integral parts of a smart grid. It refers to any voluntary change in electricity usage in response to signals from the grid operator. Demand response provides system operators with an opportunity to modify the normal consumption pattern when electricity procurement prices are higher or service reliability is jeopardized. The focus of this dissertation is on potential impacts of demand response on the operation of power systems. Although demand response may have significant impacts on generation and transmission levels, its impacts on the operation of distribution networks are studied here. This is due to the fact that distribution networks have captured the least attention and experienced the minimum advancements during the past decades and thus, they are the appropriate place to be improved when efficiency enhancement is the objective.
    The first and foremost goal of this dissertation is to quantify potential benefits of demand response to the operation of distribution networks. For this reason, a distribution network with residential customers is utilized. Disaggregated load profiles associated with residential customers and their flexibility are employed to modify the total load profile. Then, by applying the modified load profile to the distribution network, impacts of demand response on the network losses, voltage profiles, loading levels, and service reliability are studied. It is shown that even activating demand response potential of a portion of customers can lead to significant improvements in the parameters. Since restructuring in power industry, distribution networks belong to private companies which are in charge of both technical and financial aspects of their under control network. These private companies are known as distribution companies which optimize operation of distribution networks to maximize their profit while service reliability maintains in a reasonable range. They procure electricity from local generation units and/or wholesale markets to serve their customers. The decisions on electricity procurement and network operational parameters are currently optimized via distribution companies’ decision models which are modeled by mathematical optimization problems.
    The second goal of this dissertation is to extend the existing decision frameworks to consider demand response of load. The extended models aim to coordinate demand side potentials with distribution companies’ technical and financial objectives thereby increasing their profit. Distribution companies by activating demand response can either decrease the normal load when the procurement cost is higher or service reliability is jeopardized or increase it when the procurement cost is lower. The effectiveness of the extended models is demonstrated by simulating them on a real distribution network. It is illustrated that both technical and financial aspects of operation of the network improve significantly when demand response potentials are realized by the extended models
  9. Keywords:
  10. Demand Response ; Distribution Company (Dic Co) ; Distribution Networks Planning ; Distribution System Operation ; Time Varying Price

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