The paper reviews different approaches, technologies, and strategies to manage large-scale schemes of variable renewable electricity such as solar and wind power. We consider both supply and demand side measures. In addition to presenting energy system flexibility measures, their importance to renewable electricity is discussed. The flexibility measures available range from traditional ones such as grid extension or pumped hydro storage to more advanced strategies such as demand side management and demand side linked approaches, e.g. the use of electric vehicles for storing excess electricity, but also providing grid support services. Advanced batteries may offer new solutions in the future, though the high costs associated with batteries may restrict their use to smaller scale applications. Different “P2Y”-type of strategies, where P stands for surplus renewable power and Y for the energy form or energy service to which this excess in converted to, e.g. thermal energy, hydrogen, gas or mobility are receiving much attention as potential flexibility solutions, making use of the energy system as a whole. To “functionalize” or to assess the value of the various energy system flexibility measures, these need often be put into an electricity/energy market or utility service context. Summarizing, the outlook for managing large amounts of RE power in terms of options available seems to be promising.

https://research.aalto.fi/files/6557604/lund_et_al_review.pdf

Review of energy system flexibility measures to enable high levels of variable renewable electricity

The increasing penetration of renewable energy sources (RES) in power systems intensifies the need of enhancing the flexibility in grid operations in order to accommodate the uncertain power output of the leading RES such as wind and solar generation. Utilities have been recently showing increasing interest in developing Demand Response (DR) programs in order to match generation and demand in a more efficient way. Incentive- and price-based DR programs aim at enabling the demand side in order to achieve a range of operational and economic advantages, towards developing a more sustainable power system structure. The contribution of the presented study is twofold. First, a complete and up-to-date overview of DR enabling technologies, programs and consumer response types is presented. Furthermore, the benefits and the drivers that have motivated the adoption of DR programs, as well as the barriers that may hinder their further development, are thoroughly discussed. Second, the international DR status quo is identified by extensively reviewing existing programs in different regions.

/pdf/an-overview-of-demand-response-key-elements-and-33h9o2210n.pdf

An overview of Demand Response: Key-elements and international experience

Advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) enable a great opportunity to develop the residential demand response that is relevant in smart grid applications. Demand response (DR) aims to manage the required demand to match the available energy resources without adding new generation capacity. Expanding the DR to cover the residential sector in addition to the industrial and commercial sectors gives rise to a wide range of challenges. This study presents an overview of the literature on residential DR systems, load-scheduling techniques, and the latest ICT that supports residential DR applications. Furthermore, challenges are highlighted and analyzed, which are likely to become relevant research topics with regard to the residential DR of smart grid. The literature review shows that most DR schemes suffer from an externality problem that involves the effect of high-level customer consumption on the price rates of other customers, especially during peak period. A recommendation for using adaptive multi-consumption level pricing scheme is presented to overcome this challenge. *Corresponding author at: Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Tenaga Nasional Universiti, P13-B-07-06, Sri Cempaka, Jalan Sepakat Indah 2/2 Taman Sep, Kajang 43000 Selangor, Malaysia. Tel.: +60 183262643.

A review of residential demand response of smart grid

This paper investigates heat pump systems in smart grids, focussing on fields of application and control approaches that have emerged in academic literature. Based on a review of published literatu ...

https://zenodo.org/record/895978/files/article.pdf

On heat pumps in smart grids: A review

http://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/1-s2.0-S0301421512003473-main.pdf

How renewables will change electricity markets in the next five years

Advances in IT, control and forecasting capabilities have made demand response a viable, and potentially attractive, option to increase power system flexibility. This paper presents a critical review of the literature in the field of demand response, providing an overview of the benefits and challenges of demand response. These benefits include the ability to balance fluctuations in renewable generation and consequently facilitate higher penetrations of renewable resources on the power system, an increase in economic efficiency through the implementation of real-time pricing, and a reduction in generation capacity requirements. Nevertheless, demand response is not without its challenges. The key challenges for demand response centre around establishing reliable control strategies and market frameworks so that the demand response resource can be used optimally. One of the greatest challenges for demand response is the lack of experience, and the consequent need to employ extensive assumptions when modelling and evaluating this resource. This paper concludes with an examination of these assumptions, which range from assuming a fixed linear price–demand relationship for price responsive demand, to modelling the highly diverse, distributed and uncertain demand response resource as a single, centralised negative generator, adopting fixed characteristics and constraints.

/pdf/benefits-and-challenges-of-electrical-demand-response-a-3heg4y7o3l.pdf

Mark O׳Malley

Papers

Benefits and challenges of electrical demand response: A critical review