A novel generic architecture for the implementation of demand response programs in a smart grid

Nowadays, smart grid for electrical power distribution is considered as one of the most important infrastructures enabling the consumer to interact with other stakeholders to reach technical and economic objectives. This interactivity is performed through the concept of agreements that are signed between different involved actors (utility operators, electrical energy producers, consumers, electrical energy market traders, brokers...). These agreements are of the form of what is called Demand Response Programs (DRPs) which are already greatly diversified. In case of different DRPs implemented over the same network without any coordination, the network stability may get degraded rather than improved. Therefore, in order to make coordination easy to be realized, DRPs implementations based on a generic architecture become a must. In this paper, a novel generic architecture is presented. It is validated first by means of matching existing architectures with the suggested one and second by identifying some of the architecture components while implementing a DRP based on a real case study.