Application of a Home Energy Management System for Incentive-Based Demand Response Program Implementation

This paper presents an experimental real-time implementation of an incentive-based demand response program with hardware demonstration of a home energy management system. This system controls the electricity consumption of a residential electricity customer. For this purpose, the real consumption and generation profiles of a typical Portuguese household equipped with a home-scale photovoltaic system are employed. These profiles are simulated by the real-time digital simulator using real hardware resources. In the case studies, three different scenarios are simulated for a period of 24 hours with the consideration of the demand response programs and a 2 kW photovoltaic system. Different pricing scenarios are considered and the performance of the home energy management system is evaluated under each scenario. The focus is given to demonstrate how a home-scale photovoltaic system, and demand response programs, especially load-shifting scenario, can be cost-effective in the daily electricity costs of the residential customers.