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The intermittent nature of renewable energy resources creates extra challenges in the operation and control of the electricity grid. Demand flexibility markets can help in dealing with these challenges by introducing incentives for customers to modify their demand. Market-based demand-side management (DSM) have garnered serious attention lately due to its promising capability of maintaining the balance between supply and demand, while also keeping customer satisfaction at its highest levels. Many researchers have proposed using concepts from mechanism design theory in their approaches to market-based DSM. In this work, we provide a review of the advances in market-based DSM using mechanism design. We provide a categorisation of the reviewed literature and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each design criteria. We also study the utility function formulations used in the reviewed literature and provide a critique of the proposed indirect mechanisms. We show that despite the extensiveness of the literature on this subject, there remains concerns and challenges that should be addressed for the realistic implementation of such DSM approaches. We draw conclusions from our review and discuss possible future research directions., Comment: 10 pages, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid for publication

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many healthcare facilities have suffered from shortages in medical resources, particularly in Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). In this paper, we propose a game-theoretic approach to schedule PPE orders among healthcare facilities. In this PPE game, each independent healthcare facility optimises its own storage utilisation in order to keep its PPE cost at a minimum. Such a model can reduce peak demand considerably when applied to a variable PPE consumption profile. Experiments conducted for NHS England regions using actual data confirm that the challenge of securing PPE supply during disasters such as COVID-19 can be eased if proper stock management procedures are adopted. These procedures can include early stockpiling, increasing storage capacities and implementing measures that can prolong the time period between successive infection waves, such as social distancing measures. Simulation results suggest that the provision of PPE dedicated storage space can be a viable solution to avoid straining PPE supply chains in case a second wave of COVID-19 infections occurs., Comment: 22 pages, 7 figures, published in PLOS ONE https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0246110