Demand side management and rural networks extension

Each year, a large amount of money is spent to upgrade the low voltage networks. Although the quality of delivery is a major concern of the network planners, a great number of these investments are decided in order to meet the increasing demand. In rural areas, the costs per customer can turn out to be large and justify searching for solutions that allow deferring capital investments. Among these solutions, Demand Side Management can play an important role. The objective of this paper is to analyse the potentials for network savings which could result as part of a deliberate DSM policy to be implemented in the low voltage rural networks.