Metrics-Based Assessment of Sustainability in Demand Response

Assessing the effectiveness of a demand response (DR) program requires appropriate metrics of performance. In this paper, we propose the assessment of an aggregator-based residential DR program using two newly developed metrics addressing the economic and environmental aspects of sustainability. The economic sustainability metric of the DR method is quantified by the economic savings of the customers on electricity charges and the aggregator's profit. The environmental sustainability is quantified by measuring the reduction in capacity factors of fossil-fueled peaking power plants and the subsequent reduction in CO2 emissions. A simulation study is performed for a large-scale power system consisting of 5,555 users and 56,659 schedulable assets using real pricing data from a utility and a bulk electricity market for a 31-day period. Finally, we apply high-performance computing methods to the month-long study to yield a faster computation time.