Financial and Environmental Investigation of the Effects of the Demand Response Programs on the Network-Constrained Unit Commitment

Individual and public awareness of global warming and pollution has required the different sectors of industry to pay more attention to this issue and take some action in this regard. The electrical industry as the backbone of most other industries should devote more effort for pollution reduction. Unit commitment is the process of determining the state of the units for the day-ahead market. Therefore, managing unit commitment is the best option for contamination reduction. However, in the smart grid, customers can be part of the market via demand response programs. On the other hand, congestion is one of the main problems of the transmission network. Demand response programs could have a positive effect on congestion alleviation as they reduce the total power transmitted via the transmission system. In this paper, the effect of aggregated demand response programs as virtual power plants on operation cost, congestion and emission of network-constrained unit commitment is investigated. Moreover, the best rate of the incentive paid to the demand response programs participants is determined. In this study, according to the simultaneous implementation of the unit commitment problem and the demand response program, which is a complex nonlinear problem with continuous and discrete variables, the MILP method has been applied. Moreover, the transmission system is also considered to fully analyze the impact of demand response programs in the electricity market and its impact on reducing congestion. The recommended strategy is carried out on the IEEE 24 bus reliability test system to prove the effectiveness of demand response programs integration for cost and emission reduction.