Dynamic Demand Response Using Customer Coupons Considering Multiple Load Aggregators to Simultaneously Achieve Efficiency and Fairness

This paper discusses the feasibility of using customer coupon demand response in meshed secondary networks. Customers are rewarded by coupons to achieve the objective of optimal operation cost during peak periods. The interdependence of the locational marginal price and the demand is modeled by an artificial neural network. The effect of multiple load aggregators participating in customer coupon demand response is also investigated. Because load aggregators satisfy different proportions of the objective, a fairness function is defined that guarantees that aggregators are rewarded in correspondence with their participation toward the objective. Energy loss is also considered in the objective as it is an essential part of the distribution system. A dynamic coupon mechanism is designed to cope with the changing nature of the demand. To validate the effectiveness of the method, simulations of the proposed method have been performed on a real heavily-meshed distribution network in this paper. The results show that customer coupon demand response significantly contributes to shaving the peak, therefore, bringing considerable economic savings and reduction of loss.