A review of demand response techniques in smart grids

The worldwide installation of renewable energy generators has rendered the conventional frequency regulation techniques insufficient. However, smart grid in the recent years has shown great potential in regulating frequency by changing end-user demand so as to match supply. A large and growing body of literature in the past has investigated load scheduling and frequency deviation as two separate problems and proposed centralized or decentralized control techniques for eliminating power mismatch, that result in complex computational tasks and huge economic burden. Much of the research thus far fails to account for factors such as random customer demand, storage devices and various load groups in a single control model. The paper reviews previously presented demand scheduling and frequency regulation techniques as well as gives future directions for introducing a new, improved demand control system.