Demand Response and Distribution Grid Operations: Opportunities and Challenges

Demand response (DR) is becoming an integral part of power system and market operations. Smart grid technologies will further increase the use of DR in everyday operations. Once the volume of the DR reaches a certain threshold, the effect of the DR events on the distribution and transmission system operations will be hard to ignore. This paper proposes changing the business process of DR scheduling and implementation by integrating DR with distribution grid topology. Study cases using OATI webDistribute show the potential DR effect on distribution grid operations and the distribution grid changing the effectiveness of the DR. These examples illustrate the need of integrating demand response with the distribution grid.