Mobilizing flexible demand in electric power systems through service quality differentiation

Residential demand response is poised to emerge as an increasingly important aspect of power market operations due to the widespread deployment of distributed renewable supply in the form of rooftop solar panels and distributed flexibility such as batteries. A major challenge in the proliferation of residential demand response relates to the development of scalable aggregator business models that respect the requirement of consumers for privacy, simplicity, and control. This has motivated quality differentiation in the form of priority service and its generalized form, namely multilevel demand subscription. Whereas priority service relies on the differentiation of electricity service according to reliability, multilevel demand subscription further differentiates electricity service according to duration. This dissertation proposes several modeling approaches that are aimed at quantifying the impact of these two service definitions on system efficiency and costs incurred by households. The coordination achieved by these services is compared against the ideal economic benchmark, real-time pricing.
(FSA - Sciences de l'ingénieur) -- UCL, 2021