A human expert-based approach to electrical peak demand management

The objective of this paper is to propose a human expert-based approach to electrical peak demand management. The proposed approach helps to allocate demand curtailments (MW) among distribution substations (DS) or feeders in an electric utility service area based on requirements of the central load dispatch center. Demand curtailment allocation is quantified by taking into account demand response (DR) potential and load curtailment priority of each DS, which can be determined using DS loading level, capacity of each DS, customer types (residential/commercial), and load categories (deployable, interruptible, or critical). The analytic hierarchy process is used to model a complex decision-making process according to both expert inputs and objective parameters. Simulation case studies are conducted to demonstrate how the proposed approach can be implemented to perform DR using real-world data from an electric utility. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach is capable of achieving realistic demand curtailment allocations among different DSs to meet the peak load reduction requirements at the utility level.