Demand response: An enabling technology to achieve energy efficiency in a smart grid

Future electricity grids will enable greater and more sophisticated demand-side participation, which refers to the inclusion of mechanisms that enable dynamic modification of electricity demand into the operations of power grids, known as demand response (DR). The underlying information-flow infrastructures provided by the emerging smart grid enhance the interactions between customers and the market, by which DR will improve electricity grids in several aspects, for example, by reducing peak demand and reducing need for expensive peaker plants, or by enabling demand to follow supply such as those from volatile renewable resources. In this chapter, various DR programs and implementations provided by utilities and Independent System Operators/Regional Transmission Organizations in the United States will be described. A distributed direct load control approach for large-scale residential DR will be discussed as a case study, with numerical results to demonstrate its effectiveness.