A Stochastic Bilevel Scheduling Model for the Determination of the Load Shifting and Curtailment in Demand Response Programs

Demand response (DR) programs give opportunity to consumers to manage their electricity bills. Besides, distribution system operator (DSO) is interested in using DR programs to obtain technical and economic benefits for distribution network. Since small consumers have difficulties to individually take part in the electricity market, an entity named demand response provider (DRP) has been recently defined to aggregate the DR of small consumers. However, implementing DR programs face challenges to fairly allocate benefits and payments between DRP and DSO. This paper presents a procedure for modeling the interaction between DRP and DSO based on a bilevel programming model. Both DSO and DRP behave from their own viewpoint with different objective functions. On the one hand, DRP bids the potential of DR programs, which are load shifting and load curtailment, to maximize its expected profit and on the other hand, DSO purchases electric power from either the electricity market or DRP to supply its consumers by minimizing its overall cost. In the proposed bilevel programming approach, the upper level problem represents the DRP decisions, while the lower level problem represents the DSO behavior. The obtained bilevel programming problem (BPP) is converted into a single level optimizing problem using its Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) optimality conditions. Furthermore, point estimate method (PEM) is employed to model the uncertainties of the power demands and the electricity market prices. The efficiency of the presented model is verified through the case studies and analysis of the obtained results.