Aggregating a Large Number of Residential Appliances for Demand Response Applications

Current demand response (DR) programs focus on industrial consumers as they can provide a large magnitude of demand modification. In order to extend DR programs to the residential sector, aggregating service demands from a large number of residential consumers is necessary in order to achieve a sensible benefit to the power network. In this paper, we propose a methodology for residential demand aggregation, based on a multi-class queueing system. Each class represents demand blocks of a specific power level, time duration, and a service delay requirement. We use this model to minimise the cost of the appliances' aggregated power consumption under day ahead pricing. Using realistic appliances' data, we show that the proposed framework achieves a cost reduction that is close to the best achievable one.