Lessons From 10 Years of Demand Response Research: Smart Energy for Customers?

To accommodate more energy from renewable sources, the existing paradigm in the electricity grid of supply follows demand has its limitations. On the other hand, demand response aims to exploit the available flexibility in electricity consumption to follow the supply of renewables. This is possible by decoupling the demand for electricity from the demand of the associated services (such as heating, cooling, and hot water) and presents many challenges, especially if flexibility is harvested at a local scale. For 10 years, research groups worldwide have looked into demand response. This article describes the open challenges of demand response in a residential context and outlines different coordination mechanisms that optimize market profit, mitigate technical issues, and reach prosumer objectives. Several considerations are added on how these cyberphysical solutions must be complemented by other, nontechnical fields to get customers engaged.