INV ITED

The possibilities of actively incorporating the demand side are discussed in this paper; a simple control-based price signal is used to demonstrate cost savings. By Michiel Houwing, Rudy R. Negenborn, and Bart De Schutter, Member IEEE ABSTRACT | With the increasing application of distributed energy resources and novel information technologies in the electricity infrastructure, innovative possibilities to incorpo-rate the demand side more actively in power system operation are enabled. A promising, controllable, residential distributed generation technology is a microcombined heat and power system (micro-CHP). Micro-CHP is an energy-efficient technol-ogy that simultaneously provides heat and electricity to households. In this paper, we investigate to what extent domestic energy costs could be reduced with intelligent, price-based control concepts (demand response). Hereby, first the performance of a standard, so-called heat-led micro-CHP system is analyzed. Then, a model-predictive control (MPC) strategy aimed at demand response is proposed for more intelligent control of micro-CHP systems. Simulation studies illustrate the added value of the proposed intelligent control approach over the standard approach in terms of reduced variable energy costs. Demand response with micro-CHP lowers variable costs for households by about 1%–14%. The cost reductions are highest with the most strongly fluctuating real-time pricing scheme