Electrical demand and its flexibility in different energy sectors

Nowadays, the attainment of flexibility in different loads for different electricity customers is an interesting topic. The assessment of flexibility is important because of the ultimate benefits to handle challenges for both electricity customers and utilities. At first, different loads that have significant contribution in energy consumption and may be potential candidates for the extraction of demand flexibility are discussed in this paper. Secondly, different descriptions of demand side flexibility and its assessment manipulation on individual and aggregate loads are explored. After investigation of different techniques some innovative definitions of flexibility indices are surveyed for numerical flexibility assessment. The information about the flexibility potential can lead to initiate different Demand Side Management (DSM) techniques that is helpful to solve electrical power systems key issues. Keeping in view this aspect, different DSM techniques for Demand Response (DR) programs are also reviewed in this paper.