Demand response strategy for TCLs considering consumer utility

Abstract With the higher share of renewable energy, the flexibility of the power system needs to be improved. In recent years, the loads on the demand side can provide flexibility with the development of demand response technology. Thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs), as a kind of large-scale flexible load, have been a significant demand response resource. In this paper, a demand response strategy for TCLs considering consumer utility function is proposed. Firstly, a utility function is modeled to estimate the utility of TCLs. Then a model for estimating the potential of TCLs is built. On this foundation, the power system operators (PSOs) sort TCLs by consumer utility. TCLs with lower consumer utility will be called first. The study case adopts realistic data of an eastern city in China, which verifies the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.