Day-ahead Demand Side Management Optimisation Considering Payback Potential

Demand side management (DSM) is recognised as an emerging form of flexibility to facilitate the integration of renewable energy sources such as photovoltaic (PV) systems. However, DSM can have the unintended effect of introducing new demand peaks, particularly in distribution networks (DNs) as the load that was activated to provide flexibility is paid back (e.g., flexible loads reconnect, storage charges, etc.). To address this challenge, this paper proposes a day-ahead DSM scheduling methodology which optimises load payback effects in DNs. For this purpose, the “available payback potential” is introduced as a metric to explicitly capture the payback associated with DSM. The proposed methodology is demonstrated with applications to a modified IEEE 33 bus test system considering different demand flexibility levels. The results demonstrate how the optimised activation of flexible loads (shifted loads) and subsequent, scheduled, payback, improves the overall performance of the DN (e.g., meeting network limits and reducing losses), and facilitates the integration of available distributed generation.