Assessment of the Cost and Environmental Impact of Residential Demand-Side Management

A detailed study of the potential impact of low voltage (LV) residential demand-side management (DSM) on the cost and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is presented. The proposed optimisation algorithm is used to shift non-critical residential loads, with the wet load category used as a case study, in order to minimise the total daily cost and emissions due to generation. This study shows that it is possible to reshape the total power demand and reduce the corresponding cost and emissions to some extent. It is also shown that, when the baseload generating mix is dominated by coal-fired generation, the daily profiles of GHG emissions and cost conflict, such that further optimisation of the cost leads to an increase in emissions.