A Demand Response Approach to Scheduling Constrained Load Shifting

Demand response (DR) and its advantages are nowadays unquestionable due to the success of several recent implementations of DR programs. Improved methodologies and approaches are needed for the adequate consumers’ schedule in DR events, taking the consumers’ behaviour and preferences into account. In this paper, a virtual power player manages DR programs, minimizing operation costs, respecting the consumption shifting constraints. The impact of the consumption shifting in the target periods is taken into consideration. The advantages of the DR use in comparison with distributed generation (DG) are evaluated. Two scenarios based on 218 consumers in a frame of 96 periods have been implemented. It is demonstrated the advantages of DR in the operation of distributed energy resources, namely when considering the lack of supply.