Demand Response Programs for Energy Systems: Challenges, State-of-the-Art, Future Trends

Dear Colleagues,

Demand response (DR) programs involve any action to encourage customers toward changing their electricity consumption in response to changes in electricity price over time, particularly in order to induce lower electricity demand when market prices are high or when the grid’s safe operation is exposed to risk. DR programs seek to achieve a wide range of beneficial results, including reinforcing electrical grid reliability, ensuring sufficient supply, and flattening demand curves. DR also addresses operational and emergency reserves, capacity, and real-time balancing. Any electricity market participant can initiate DR actions, e.g., consumers, retailers, distribution system operators (DSOs), transmission system operators (TSOs), suppliers, and aggregators. Consumers can benefit by reducing their electric bill payments. Retailers can better compete to offer new services to improve their customer loyalty and satisfaction. DSOs and TSOs can benefit from reliable market participants that provide fast and dependable operating reserves (ancillary services) and capacity to address congestion issues and balance intermittent renewable generations. Electricity suppliers and aggregators can benefit from alternative solutions to source their power and avoid investing in costly peaking plants. Despite many benefits, implementing DR programs is challenging for market participants. A user needs to schedule the energy usage of his appliances in an online manner since they may not know the energy prices and the demand of their appliances ahead of time. Retailers need comprehensive tools to analyze their customers’ needs, habits, and expectations. DSOs and TSOs require efficient and distributed optimization algorithms to make decisions and perform corrective actions in a timely fashion. Suppliers and aggregators also need scheduling approaches to commit their supply in a cost-minimizing manner.

This Special Issue seeks high-quality submissions that highlight emerging applications and challenges of DR programs in electricity markets with the goal of covering viable DR frameworks, case study analyses, and necessary transformations in electricity markets to implement efficient DR programs successfully. The topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Market participants interactions in DR programs;
• Efficient pricing mechanism design for DR programs;
• Residential appliances scheduling algorithms in DR programs;
• Applications of machine learning algorithms in designing autonomous DR programs;
• DR programs applications for energy management in industrial sectors (e.g., data centers);
• DR applications in ancillary services market (e.g., frequency regulation);
• DR programs applications in energy hubs, energy districts, and microgrids;
• The role of electric vehicles in DR programs;
• Online optimization algorithms design for DR applications;
• The role of Internet-of-Things (IoT) in DR programs;
• DR programs in transactive energy markets (e.g., direct trading of prosumers);
• DR programs in deregulated electricity markets.

Dr. Shahab Bahrami
Dr. M. Hadi Amini
Guest Editors

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• Demand response
• Energy systems
• Electricity price variations
• Electrical demand
• Peak-time period
• Distribution system operators
• Transmission system operators
• Electricity suppliers and aggregators
• Ancillary services
• Online optimization algorithms
• Appliances scheduling
• Transactive energy markets
• Microgrids
• Energy hubs
• Renewable energy resources
• Internet-of-Things (IoT)