Enhance low‐carbon power system operation via carbon‐aware demand response

Abstract As the electrification process advances, enormous power flexibility is becoming available on the demand side, which can be harnessed to facilitate power system decarbonisation. Hence, this paper studies the carbon‐aware demand response (C‐DR) paradigm, where individual users aim to minimise their carbon footprints through the optimal scheduling of flexible load devices. The specific operational dynamics and constraints of deferrable loads and thermostatically controlled loads are considered, and the carbon emission flow method is employed to compute users' carbon footprints with nodal carbon intensities. Then, an optimal power dispatch model that integrates the C‐DR mechanism is proposed for low‐carbon power system operation, based on the carbon‐aware optimal power flow method. Two solution algorithms, including a centralised Karush–Kuhn–Tucker reformulation algorithm and an iterative solution algorithm, are developed to solve the bi‐level power dispatch optimisation model. Numerical simulations on the IEEE New England 39‐bus system demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.