Impact of incentive-based demand response on urban low-voltage grid operation

Within the European project Smart House / Smart Grids (SH/SG), contemporary technologies for automated demand response (ADR) in private smart houses and automated load and generation control were developed and tested. At the same time, impacts of ADR and distributed generation (DG) on low-voltage grid operation were researched by means of software simulations in a real urban network. Research questions included whether ADR can be used for lowering grid losses, voltage control and increasing the accommodation ceiling of DG. The paper at hand shortly introduces the basic energy management concept as well as simulation goals. It then presents and discusses simulation results regarding operation of an ADR system with high amounts of DG in a grid area in the city of Mannheim.