On Optimizing Demand Response Management Performance for Microgrids under Communication Unreliability Constraint

When studying the real-time pricing in smart grids, there is a common assumption that a perfect bidirectional communication network is built between supply and demand ends. However, this assumption is unrealistic, especially in a microgrid system which includes renewable energy resources. In this paper, we consider the uncertainty of imperfect communications in both supply and demand ends, which affects the performance of the microgrid system in terms of the packet loss ratio of the power demand information transmission and the forecasting accuracy ratio of the renewable energy generation. We analyze the impacts of unreliable communications on the demand response management (DRM) performance of real-time pricing in the microgrid system. A joint optimization problem is therefore formulated in order to maximize the DRM performance of the microgrid system. Leveraging the dual decomposition, the proposed optimization problem is solved via two sub-problems. Simulation results reveal the impacts of imperfect communications on the DRM performance.