The impact of customers’ participation level and various incentive values on implementing emergency demand response program in microgrid operation

Abstract Customers play a key role in running Demand Response Programs (DRPs). Incentive-based DRP is defined as changes in costumers’ consumption level in response to incentive programs outlined by systems to reduce the daily load demand peaks. Optimal operation of microgrids is one of the most important challenges of power system operators. Decreasing the cost of generation and operation while the constraints are met is one of the main objectives of this problem. In this article, the impact of customers’ participation level in Emergency Demand Response Program (EDRP) and the effect of illogical incentive values in implementing EDRP on the microgrid operation are represented. Moreover, the effect of applying an incentive-based EDRP, on loads and power system operation cost in presence of various uncertainties has been studied in detail. To model the uncertainties in microgrid operation such as generation unit failure, random outages of transmission lines and upstream line, load forecasting error, power generation uncertainty of renewable energies based distributed generation units, and the possibility of no response of customers to scheduled interruptions, several scenarios are considered. EDRP is modeled based on price elasticity and customer benefit function. To verify the efficiency of the proposed model, it is applied to 11-Bus microgrid in a 24-h scheduling period. Simulation results illustrate the effects of different level of customer’s participation on costumer’s benefit and total operation costs as well as determining an efficient use of energy resources in microgrid operation. It is also observed that unreasonable increase or decrease of incentives leads to increase of total cost. This gives an overview to microgrid operator to select the optimum incentive value based on the situation.