Efficient Algorithm for Scalable Event-based Demand Response Management in Microgrids

TL;DR

This paper introduces a fast, scalable approximation algorithm for event-based demand response in microgrids, enabling quick load management during contingencies while ensuring system stability and near-optimal utility.

Contribution

It presents a simple greedy algorithm with theoretical performance guarantees for demand response, validated through extensive simulations on large customer datasets and real-world system data.

Findings

Algorithm operates in milliseconds for thousands of customers

Achieves near-optimal load curtailment with provable bounds

Effectively maintains voltage and network constraints during islanded mode

Abstract

Demand response management has become one of the key enabling technologies for smart grids. Motivated by the increasing demand response incentives offered by service operators, more customers are subscribing to various demand response programs. However, with growing customer participation, the problem of determining the optimal loads to be curtailed in a microgrid during contingencies within a feasible time frame becomes computationally hard. This paper proposes an efficient approximation algorithm for event-based demand response management in microgrids. In event-based management, it is important to curtail loads as fast as possible to maintain the stability of a microgrid during the islanded mode in a scalable manner. A simple greedy approach is presented that can rapidly determine a close-to-optimal load curtailment scheme to maximize the aggregate customer utility in milliseconds for a large number of customers. This paper further derives a novel theoretical guarantee of the gap between the proposed efficient algorithm and the optimal solution (that may be computationally hard to obtain). The performance of algorithm is corroborated extensively by simulations with up to thousands of customers. For the sake of practicality, the proposed event-based demand response management algorithm is applied to a feeder from the Canadian benchmark distribution system. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach efficiently optimizes microgrid operation during islanded mode while maintaining appropriate voltage levels and network constrains.