Fairness-Aware Game Theoretic Approach for Demand Response in Microgrids

Demand response programs are implemented by the utilities to manage the energy consumption at consumer side. Demands are managed in response to supply conditions as opposed to the traditional grid. The existing programs focus mainly on achieving system objectives such as minimizing peaks and reducing the cost of power generation. Consequently, users´ electrical bills will be reduced but the question of fairness has barely been discussed in the literature. In this paper, the issue of fairness within demand response programs is addressed. In this context, a fair pricing model based on the contribution of each user toward attaining the aggregated system cost is proposed. In addition, the proposed system considers a more realistic scenario that consists of multiple energy sources within a micro grid as opposed to existing ones that use only one shared energy source. We first employ the concept of Shapley value in the pricing model to evaluate the fairness of existing works. Then, we use an approximation of this value to drive our proposed demand response program. Finally, we evaluate the use of the approximate Shapley within our proposed demand response algorithm and compare it to existing works.