Assessing the potential of residential demand response systems to assist in the integration of local renewable energy generation

Mass market demand response programmes may be utilised to assist bulk power network management of fluctuations in output from renewable generation systems. The use of actuated systems may delay the timing at which the technique becomes useful because of the need for the deployment of hardware and software architecture in households. In contrast, demand response systems based only on information exchange between the grid operator and the consumer has the potential for rapid uptake. The extent to which a notional demand response system could maximise the use of local wind generation was evaluated using a half-hourly dataset of electricity exported and imported to and from the grid to a community serviced by a private wire distribution network fed by a 750 kW wind farm. Constraints were modelled to provide an estimate of the proportion of electricity export that could be utilised by the community. The constraints considered were the duration over which the export period occurred, its timing with respect to occupant activity and the availability of dispatchable loads. These constraints reduced the proportion of export that could be utilised by the community creating in effect a maximum addressable opportunity that was found to be 35 % of the original total of electricity exported. This proportion is likely to be further reduced by a number of factors, for instance, demand and generation forecasting errors and longitudinal consumer fatigue.