Innovative tools for demand response strategies: a real-life experience

The increasing amount of power plants connected to the distribution networks is pointing out issues about energy balances of local communities as well as observability and management of the energy flows by the Distribution System Operator. This paper presents a real life Demand Response campaign carried out by the local Distribution System Operator to reduce the Reverse Power Flow caused by the increasing amount of energy produced locally by distributed generators from not programmable energy sources. Innovative near-real time smart meters and advanced software developed under the Nobel GRID and the WiseGRID projects were used for the trial. Furthermore, these findings and actual data have been used for running simulations at the primary substation level for a complete year. The encouraging results obtained, especially when large energy consumers are involved, have shown the effectiveness of these tools and how they can enable the Distribution System Operator to use Demand Response strategies for increasing grid efficiency and control.