Evaluation of Voluntary Residential Demand Response in Smart Grids

Due to the real time changes in energy prices, demand response for residential customers who pay for fixed energy rates helps the utility to reduce its costs. However, residential demand response market is largely untapped, mainly due to the lack of customers' participation. This paper discusses two demand response programs for residential customers. These programs are not restricted to peak hours and they are completely voluntary. Moreover, they provide a tradeoff between the incentive that the customers receive and the discomfort caused for the customers by participating in the DR program. This trade-off can potentially result in high customer participation. Using the publicly available data, we evaluate the savings that the customers and utility can expect from performing each of these programs.