Overview of Demand Side Responses

The demand side responses are associated with the intellectual energy use. Through the demand side responses big business, services and customers may turn up or turn down or might shift in the actual time. The demand side response is viewed as the important tool that helps in making sure that a secure, sustainable and affordable system of electricity is developed. The demand side responses provide assistance in understanding that demand peaks and fill in trough, especially on circumstances when the power is plentiful, reasonable and clean.

For the corporate and the consumers, the demand side responses are viewed as the smooth way of saving the total cost of energy and lowering the carbon footprint (Singh et al. 2017). By promoting increased participation in the problems of industry, may result in customer opportunity. The present study will be critically analysing the strategies of demand side management and would provide explanation of drivers and barriers in their application. Considerations should be paid towards technological and financial trends introduced by UK regulations.

Demand side responses is viewed as key measures of demand management which is available to help create balance in network. The demand side addresses the corresponding constraints by adjusting with the energy consumptions and mitigating the purpose of under supply (Behrangrad 2015). By altering the demand profile and raising flexibility in demand side responses, the DSR can help the electricity marketplace to adopt the obtainability of supply and requirements of demand. The consumers inspired by demand side responses are taking short term shift of demand. This implies that increase and decrease in consumption leads to rise in export and take up the excess amount of energy from the network of electricity.

Alternative demand side management instruments consist of efficient energy and distributed energy. The energy efficiency helps in lowering the demand on permanent basis and consist of measures such as creating insulation, more effective solutions of lightning, higher efficient boilers etc. distributed energy denotes to the generation of power on system namely storage and separate unit distribution.

The respondents from the interview has defined numerous advantages of demand side responses and have put forward their argument that demand side responses may produce value for the GB system by implementing higher degree of efficiency relating to system capacity. The application of greater efficiency would help in providing guarantee relating to appropriate security supply at lower level costs than the thermal generation (Spence et al. 2015). Alternative benefit of demand side responses is that it has the ability of lowering the emission of greenhouses gas by reducing the demand for higher emission peak plant to establish a systematic balance. For UK, it is vital to move in the direction of low carbon economy where a constraint in the system prevails by the intermittent generations. Efficient use of plant helps in lowering the emission of greenhouse gas and consumption of resources.

Importance of Demand Side Management

Interviewees has forwarded their acknowledgement by outlining the definition of DSR despite being difficult to quantify in the direction of specific papers for indicative estimates (Li et al. 2017). In a statement published by Energy UK where civic data have stated a 20% rise in demand of 12GW. The sustainability report has outlined that the technological prospective of demand administration is capped during system peaks that ranges amid 33% in winter and 29% in summer. 

Several respondents of the interview have expressed their concerns that inadequate measures have been adopted in developing the market for Demand Side Responses and the demand side management in Great Britain (Gelazanskas and Gamage 2014). The respondents have also mentioned certain obstacles relating to the roll out of several DSR products and technology. The respondents of interview have flagged number of barriers in the placement of DSR. The important regions stated comprised of concerned in the areas of market structures, DSR perceptions, economics and market related regulatory arrangements.

Market Structures: Up to now the supply market was considered stable relatively with the prevalence of foreseeable and controllable levels of generation such as expectable functions in demand by making investment in flexible generation of thermal. The distribution network is presently created with adequate network ability to meet the peak flows (Wu, Tazvinga and Xia 2015). With increase in the renewables distribution networks and constant fall in industry and large scale demand the system needs enhanced investment in flexibility that DSR can offer. DSR could turn out to be one possible solution but requires development of flexibility in marketplace and marketable arrangement to promote appointment of suppliers, aggregators and customers.

Economic barriers: Customers need a monetary inducement to modify their arrangements of electric consumption. This demands venture both in the money and exertion by customers (Finn and Fitzpatrick 2014). Additionally, it is exposes the consumers to the risk, on failing to distribute the services for which they are provided contract as they would be held liable for penalties.    

The UK regulatory requirement states that policy of energy has immensely placed their emphasis on enduring reduction of demand through policies such as Green Deal and Energy Saving Opportunities Scheme (Yi et al. 2017). A large number of demand side responses have the access to the wholesale and create a balance in market. Therefore, the incapability of the demand side participants to access the balancing market and wholesale market might create an impact on the efficient market capacity.

Alternative Demand Side Management Instruments

Distribution generation refers to the embedded generation. Distributed generation is referred as the electricity producing plant which is linked with the distribution network rather than transmission network (Djapic, Tindemans and Strbac 2015.). There are number of distribution generation types which combines of heat and power plants and hydroelectric power generators.

During the last few years’ significant amount of growth is noticed in distribution generators which looks to connect with the distribution network. Moving with the increased growth in the volume of connections there is an increased concern where customers have experienced certain problems in circumnavigating their way through the construction process (Qadrdan et al. 2017). The distribution network is regarded as the variety of technology that facilitate the supply of power at or close to the solar panel, batteries and heat pumps. The small scale asset is designated in the distribution of resources and energy with increase in cost effectiveness and demand.

Distributed Generated resources creates highly sustainable and cost effective mixture to consumers. The major driver of the growth is the increased competitiveness of the solar, wind and technology in battery (Teng et al. 2015). Similar to industrial activities the development in the distributed generation has given rise to exponential learning curve. The reason for this is that with the rise in capacity and building of knowledge there is a fall in price. however, the prices have been yet to fall to the level of wholesale electricity price.

Responses obtained from the distributed energy have certain added advantages. This includes lower the requirement of expensive peaker plants, lessening outlay on the new transmission and distribution lines which increases the reliability of energy network (Schachter et al. 2016). With more prevalent distribution energy responses, it provides the opportunity of displacing the traditional generation of baseloads by creating disruption in the structure of energy industry value chain. The opportunity of gaining revenue is by installing the distributed resources of energy in the households. Customers at the residential level would be able to generate and store energy that would additionally reduce the reliance on variability of grid price enabling them to sell energy locally during selected times. Community that are connected at residential level would assist in establishing energy collaboration by communicating with each other to identify the correct time of buying or selling energy. 

The distribution generation can help in gaining benefit if the environment gains benefit from its use and lowers the amount of electricity that must be derived at centralized power point. This may lower down the impact on the environment from the centralized generation. The technology of cost effective distribution generation is considered helpful in generating electricity at homes and business that are making use of the renewable source of energy namely the solar and the wind energy (Sweetnam et al. 2018). Furthermore, the distribution generation provides assistance in harnessing the energy that might otherwise get wasted through combined heat and power system. By using the local energy resources, the distribution generation assist in lowering or cutting down the wasted energy that takes place at the time of transmission and distribution of electricity delivery system. In spite of the benefits of distribution generation there are certain amount of negative environmental impacts.  

Advantages of Demand Side Responses

The system of distributed generation requires footprint and they are located close to the end users. There is numerous system of distributed generation that may not be attractive to eye and might lead to land usage concern (Hattam et al. 2017). The technologies of distribution generation consist of combustion particularly burning of fossil fuels that results in air pollution. The effects created by bigger fossil fuel may be smaller in measure but may be located closely in the immensely populated areas. There are some technologies of distributed generation particularly the burning of waste, burning of biomass with combined heat and power may require water for generation of steam and cooling. The distributed generation system that uses the burning of energy may be less significant than the centralized power plants due to the inefficiencies in scale. The technology of distributed generation may lead to negative environmental issues upon the conclusion of useful life when it is replaced or removed.

A commitment has been made by UK of lowering the emission of greenhouses by 34% by the end of the year 2020. This is viewed as the giant step forward towards reduction in demand but in actual situation it is not likely to be regarded as the giant step of bring to an end to the increasing levels of extreme weather happenings such as drought (Sheng et al. 2016). Therefore, a developed country such as UK needs to go further. This does not imply that drop in the standard would act as the tool of reducing the emission. Wastefulness is correctly created in the system which the individual uses. A large number of power plants releases approximately two third of the waste that ultimate contributes in the environment with domestic house and office are improperly insulated. According to the government research it is estimated that some of the people in UK can cut down the energy use by around 30% across the board and save close to £12 billion every year to reduce the bills and enhance the energy efficiency.

The research council of UK has stated guidelines for local population and other people relating to the lower release of carbon. Further guidelines have been provided regarding greenhouse gas emission and procedure involved in educating the public authorities (Adefarati and Bansal 2016). The purpose of this guidelines is to encourage the local authorities in reporting regarding the emission and provide assistance in the submitting and interpreting the data. The guidelines relating to the financing of energy efficiency is issued in the public to offer description relating to the availability of the options that are accessible to the public sector companies in measuring the efficiency of fund.

Barriers to Demand Side Responses

In addition to this, model energy performance contracts are also issued in the form of approach to assist the public sector organization to retrofit the homes and office insulation by implementing the measures of energy conservation. They act as the medium of cutting the carbon emission and achieving substantial amount of annual cost savings.

The government of UK has launched a program of street lightning toolkit during the month of February in 2015 that is considered as the medium of helping the local authorities in implementing the projects of exterior lightning (Capitanescu et al. 2015). Such measures would help in improving the energy efficiency with lower usage of carbon with improved financial savings. The toolkit is created to aid financial objectives of assisting the local authorities to compute the potential cost of savings with a separate guidance of the introducing documentation on the business development. The energy efficiency strategy would help in increasing the present policy of energy efficiency and realise the UK wind energy efficiency policy over the forthcoming years. 

The demand side management act as the tool of lower the burden on electricity from the customer’s end by applying the measures of efficient load shipping measures (Alwash, Ramachandaramurthy and Mithulananthan 2015). The fruitful demand side management programs are promoted by government with state initiative and monetary constructions in line to decrease the use of electricity by lowering the requirement of new generation sources.

The welfares of the energy efficient technologies are designed by associating the avoided generation expenses and by avoiding the supports in electricity with loss in proceeds from the reduced sale of electricity (Elmitwally et al. 2015). The demand side management programmes is applied to reduce the additional peak or the capacity of load generation together with the distribution facilities. The actual benefit for the highly developed economy is that new equipment of reducing emission is far more less costly then enhancing the present equipment. According to the report of world bank losing out on such opportunity instead of creating new economies would lead to serious financial, environmental and social consequences.

The strategies of utility demand side management are viewed as the measure of resource acquisition. In other words, it aims to create balance among the options of supply side and measures of the demand side options at the macroeconomic level until the marginal costs and the substitute energy supply side options is equivalent to the marginal cost of the demand side. 

Market Structures and Demand Side Responses

As stated by Mahmoud, Yorino and Ahmed (2016) the improvement in the end use energy provides numerous advantage. The advantages comprise of the higher amount of efficiency with direct and indirect monetary welfares to the customers and the general public but reducing the needs of extra supply, and mitigating the risk from the future fluctuation in price. Hence, an assertion can be bough forward by stating that efficient investment helps in stimulating the economic growth with improved amount of energy security in UK.

The government of UK is required to provide financial incentive to encourage the use of energy efficiency lightning. Numerous studies have considered this program as the primary step forward in the direction of lease cost utility planning (Adefarati and Bansal 2016). However, findings obtained from the study states that new policies needs abolishing the financial rules that tilts the favour towards investment in supply so that customer end-use efficiency can be improved.

Conclusion: 

After conducting a detailed analysis, a conclusive evidence has been reached that reduction in the peak demand and creating carbon cooling and heating with communal practice would act as the vital tool in lowering the consumption of energy. The communal and metropolitan level energy efficient technologies would assist in offering guidance for the urban planning and applying the community design together with the energy management. The analysis has bought forward an evidence that integration of the information, communication and technologies of renewable energy at the building, communal and city level intervention would assist in lowering the emission of energy. 

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