Demand Response Provision via Domestic Air Conditioner Direct Load Control by the Retailers

Direct load control (DLC), which is an aspect of demand response, is an on-off pattern or a change in set points involved with special devices of customers offered by the system operators in a manner to optimize a number of objectives. In this paper, DLC is in hands of retailers acting as third party firms between the Disco and the customers attaining profit by purchasing power from the Disco and selling it to the customers. The retailers are also able to increase their profit controlling the customers’ load. Assuming the smart grid infrastructure it is possible for the customers to announce their contribution levels and incentive bids daily to the retailers by means of interfaces installed in each customer home. Considering the fact that the retailers are responsible to give incentives to the customers, optimizing the number of customers accepted and curtailed in each contribution level and bid is done by a mixed integer linear programming (MILP). The results show that the method is able to maximize the retailer’s profit and fairly transfer the aggregated load level peak while warranting customers’ conveniences considering some constraints.