Integrating demand-side resources into distribution system planning: A proposal under commercial energy service environment

Coordinating electricity sales with DSM implementation at planning stage after the integration of commercial energy services have become a significant issue for the decision-makers of utilities. Under this background, a novel Grid-side Integrated Resource Planning (GIRP) paradigm is proposed in this paper. Through the identification of key elements induced by the energy service and the interdependence of decision-making of the main grid and its affiliated energy service companies (ESCOs), a bilevel coordinated planning model is developed to achieve globally optimal investment by making use of the synergetic effect. A bee colony complementary hybrid algorithm (BCCA) is also proposed by introducing nonlinear complementarity function to tackle the inefficiency of solving bilevel optimization problems. The results of case study indicate the superiority of GIRP in terms of its better economic benefits and environmental effects and also the improved efficiency of the proposed algorithm.