Real-time visualisation of residential load flexibility for advanced demand side management

Demand side management has been recognized as one of the potentially significant flexibility resources whose deployment will be necessary for the operation of future power transmission, and probably more so, distribution networks. With this in mind the greater observability of the demand is becoming an important requirement, not only for keeping the network performance parameters within their limits, but also for assessing the availability and flexibility of demand at any given time. Besides forecasting total power demand at lower aggregation levels to facilitate the balancing of demand and available distributed generation, the key information for flexible network operation is the amount of (time-varying) controllable loads in the geographical area of interest. This paper introduces a two-module graphical user interface (GUI) for the operator of the future distribution network that provides in a user friendly form the information on real-time demand forecasting and demand composition. The GUI presents, both graphically and numerically, the forecasted and actual active and reactive power demand and the composition of the forecasted demand in terms of different categories (resistive loads, motors, lighting, etc.) of the load and total controllable and uncontrollable load. The information is provided, based on the user requirements, either a half hour or 24 hours ahead.