Aggregation and Remuneration of Electricity Consumers and Producers for the Definition of Demand-Response Programs

The use of distributed generation and demand-response (DR) programs is needed for improving business models, namely concerning the remuneration of these resources in the context of smart grids. In this paper, a methodology is proposed in which a virtual power player aggregates several small-sized resources, including consumers participating in DR programs. The global operation costs resulting from the resource scheduling are minimized. After scheduling the resources in several operation scenarios, clustering tools are applied in order to obtain distinct resources' groups. The remuneration structure that better fits the aggregator goals is then determined. Two clustering algorithms are compared: 1) hierarchical; and 2) fuzzy c-means clustering. The remuneration of small resources and consumers that are aggregated is made considering the maximum tariff in each group. The implemented case study considers 2592 operation scenarios based on a real Portuguese distribution network with 548 distributed generators and 20 310 consumers.