Modeling demand response in the residential sector for the provision of reserves

Penetrations of variable renewable generation are increasing globally. While this trend is creating challenges for power systems, improved communication technologies are providing opportunities for the demand side to play a role in meeting some of these challenges. Commercial and industrial customers have long participated in demand response, but residential demand response is a largely untapped resource. Smart grid solutions provide the residential sector with the potential to respond to the systems needs over short time scales. A number of residential loads are well suited to providing reserves with minimal impact on consumers. In this paper the potential response from the residential sector in a heating dominated climate is estimated by modeling relevant responsive loads. The potential response is significant (6% of system demand on average). The aggregate interruptible load is expected to fall by approximately 19% by 2020. The modeling captures the daily and seasonal variations of the available resource.