Flexibility management model of home appliances to support DSO requests in smart grids
Fernando Lezama, João Soares, Bruno Canizes, Zita Vale
Abstract
Several initiates have been taken promoting clean energy and the use of local flexibility towards a more sustainable and green economy. From a residential point of view, flexibility can be provided to operators using home-appliances with the ability to modify their consumption profiles. These actions are part of demand response programs and can be utilized to avoid problems, such as balancing/congestion, in distribution networks. In this paper, we propose a model for aggregators flexibility provision in distribution networks. The model takes advantage of load flexibility resources allowing the re-schedule of shifting/real-time home-appliances to provision a request from a distribution system operator (DSO) or a balance responsible party (BRP). Due to the complex nature of the problem, evolutionary computation is evoked and different algorithms are implemented for solving the formulation efficiently. A case study considering 20 residential houses equipped each with seven types of home-appliances is used to test and compare the performance of evolutionary algorithms solving the proposed model. Results show that the aggregator can fulfill a flexibility request from the DSO/BRP by re-scheduling the home-appliances loads for the next 24-h horizon while minimizing the costs associated with the remuneration given to end-users.