A Bilevel Model for Voluntary Demand-Side Flexibility in Distribution Grids

Demand-side flexibility in distribution grids: Voluntary versus mandatory contracting

“…The first message from Figure 4 is that incorporating explicit demand-side flexibility in distribution grid planning does increase the welfare gains regardless of how it is contracted, either voluntary or mandatory confirming our previous work results in Nouicer et al (2023) and Nouicer et al (2022). The DSO contracts demand-side flexibility to save on network investments.…”

“…In Nouicer et al (2022), we investigate a voluntary scheme of demand-side connection agreement. The price of demand-side flexibility is set endogenously by the DSO in order to attract the needed demand-side flexibility from the LL consumers.…”

“…This paper extends the bilevel model developed in Nouicer et al (2023) to include an endogenous calculation of the mandatory demand-side flexibility compensation. We compare its outputs with the bilevel model developed by Nouicer et al (2022) for voluntary connection agreements. To the best of our knowledge, there are no similar comparisons in the literature informing the benefits and implementation constraints of mandatory versus voluntary contracting of demand-side flexibility.…”

“…First, we modify the model for mandatory demand-side connection agreements, developed in Nouicer et al (2023), to include an endogenously set compensation by the DSO. The second model used is for voluntary demand-side connection agreement, developed by Nouicer et al (2022). In what follows, we introduce the setup of the mandatory-demand side connection agreement bi-level model.…”

“…The case study investigated in this paper is similar to the one used in Nouicer et al (2022). The key parameters are shown in Table 1.…”