Issues, challenges and opportunities for utilization of demand-side resources in support of power system operations

Summary form only given. Aging of fossil generation fleet and high penetrations of variable energy resources (VER) create operating and scheduling challenges for power system operators with reduced generation flexibility and increased variability. One of the key promises of Smart Grid is to enable demand-side resources, including thermal and electric storage, to provide energy balancing and ramping needed to mitigate intermittency impact of VER, especially regulating capacity of the conventional generation fleet declines.This panel presentation will address operational and technical issues associated with integration of demand response (DR) and distributed energy resources (DER) with power system operations, covering from behind-the-meter DR/DER assets to distribution and transmission grid, retail and wholesale markets. The presentation will cover issues associated with creating energy imbalance and ancillary services from demand response and distributed resources, while considering distribution congestion and wholesale operations. An approach for intra-hour scheduling of dispatchable DR/DER and its coordination with VER operation will be presented. The presentation will also discuss data modeling, information systems and data exchange requirements for coordination between retail and wholesale operations for enrolling, scheduling, monitoring, and control of DR, DER, VER and conventional resources. Transactive methods for "real-time" and end to-end coordination of capabilities will be reviewed.