iDR: Consumer and grid friendly demand response system

Abstract

Peak demand is a major challenge for power utilities across the world. Demand Response (DR) is considered to be effective in addressing peak demand by altering consumption of end consumers, so as to match supply capability. However, an efficient DR system needs to respect end consumer convenience and understand their propensity of participating in a particular DR event, while altering the consumer demand. Understanding such preferences is non-trivial due to the large-scale and variability of consumers and the infrastructure changes required for collecting essential (smart meter and/or appliance specific) data. In this paper, we propose an inclusive DR system, iDR, that helps an electricity provider to design an effective demand response event by analyzing its consumers' house-level consumption (smart meter) data and external context (weather conditions, seasonality etc.) data. iDR combines analytics and optimization to determine optimal power consumption schedules that satisfy an electricity provider's DR objectives - such as reduction in peak load - while minimizing the inconvenience caused to consumers associated with alteration in their consumption patterns. iDR uses a novel context-specific approach for determining end consumer baseline consumptions and user convenience models. Using these consumer specific models and past DR experience, iDR optimization engine identifies -(i) when to execute a DR event, (ii) who are the consumers to be targeted for the DR, and (iii) what signals to be sent. Some of iDR's capabilities are demonstrated using real-world house-level as well as appliance-level data. © 2014 ACM.