Exploring human factors effects in the Smart Grid system of systems Demand Response

Human factors can play a significant role in the behavior of a system of systems. This is particularly true in collaborative system of systems, an example of which is the Smart Grid Demand Response. The Smart Grid Demand Response example is used in this paper to develop and prototype an approach to examine the impact of human factors (e.g., news stories and human interactions) on system of systems performance (e.g., peak load). The approach presented makes use of an agent-based model combined with probabilistic analysis to show the sensitivity of the performance of the Demand Response to uncertainty in human's decision to participate in a direct load control program. The human's decision could be influenced by several factors, including interactions with other humans and the news. Since most of the information regarding human factors is not known a priori, a sensitivity analysis was conducted in order to examine emergent behavior. The results of this study show that human factors can have a significant impact on a collaborative system of systems. In this study, news stories and human interactions have a significant influence on the effectiveness of the notional Demand Response program modeled.