Assessment and simulation of demand-side management potential in urban power distribution networks

The main aim of this paper is to present a national research project that is being jointly carried out by four Spanish Universities. This project is focused on creating and developing methodologies to allow a comprehensive, efficient and flexible management of residential distribution systems, achieving this flexibility in the delivery side by means of intelligent operation of the demand-side and a flexible control of electric demand, taking into account the opportunities introduced by new uses in energy and more efficient electro-technologies. The first part of this paper will be devoted to obtain the changes in the load curve for a residential feeder generated by direct load control (DLC). This task will be accomplished through the use of physically-based load models (PBLM) of loads developed by authors. In the second part we will analyze the impact of power and energy demand reductions of the load curves (using DLC strategies) on the operation of an illustrative power distribution network. Finally, the possibilities of a new tool, demand-side biding for residential users will be presented.