Emergency demand response for distribution system contingencies

The use of demand side resources to respond to contingencies on electric power systems is typically limited to interruptible service contracts for large commercial or industrial customers and bulk load shedding schemes. There are a few programs that allow bidding of emergency response capability at the transmission level, but are primarily for response to reserve margin shortages. This paper proposes a demand response program that enables the use of residential load resources to respond to contingencies down to the distribution level. This contingency response program enables targeted, selective demand response that expands the range of contingencies that can be mitigated by demand and substitutes the shedding of non-critical loads for bulk load shedding programs. The program is targeted, in that it allows for implementation at any node in the system, and selective in that it chooses the least amount and lowest impact/cost loads to shed to alleviate a given contingency.