Incentive-based demand response policies for techno-economic microgrid operation—a comparative analysis

Abstract Power system optimisation academics have long been drawn to the idea of scheduling distributed energy resources (DERS) optimally to decrease the generating cost of a low-voltage (LV) microgrid (MG) system. The present work implements a correlational analysis between two different incentive-based demand response (IBDR) policies for load curtailment. The first one involves a price elasticity matrix to emphasise paying incentives to the customers for curtailing load during peak hours only. The second IBDR policy is an optimisation-based approach which involves customer willingness to deliver economic benefit both to themselves and the DISCOM. The final restructured load demand is the base load demand minus the load curtailed by the IBDR policies. Henceforth, generation cost minimisation is applied on the MG system for all three load models. Three case studies are performed for an exhaustive techno-economic analysis of the subject MG system. The study uses the recently created quick and easy circle search algorithm (CSA) as its optimisation tool. The generation cost was decreased from $25,463 to $24,969 and $24,899 using IBDR1 and IBDR2 policies of load curtailment, respectively. During IBDR1, 80kw load was curtailed, and the customers gained an incentive of $277, whereas using IBDR2 policy, 105 kW of load was curtailed, and the DISCOM benefited $211. The consumers also benefited $500 in the process. Numerical results also show that CSA outperformed various optimisation algorithms from the literature and ample algorithms implemented in the work. Central tendency measurements further support the reliability and effectiveness of CSA.