Critical Demand Response Opportunities in Heavy Industries as a Solution for Large Active Power Imbalance in Smart Grid: Study in Three Industrial Subgroups

Demand response (DR) is one of the most cost-effective and logical smart grid terms for power systems that can be used during peak load hours, whereas load shedding (LS) is the last and most expensive solution in emergency grid situations. The aim of them is to satisfy equilibrium constraints between consumption and generation and restore the power system frequency to normal bounds at the least possible time. The rapid increase in power grid costs and limitations on electricity generation resources have resulted in the increasing need for industrial customers’ participation as an alternative solution to peak load spikes. Therefore, this paper considers the estimation of imbalance active power in a smart strategy to introduce a critical DR (CDR) in heavy industries (pulp and paper, cement, and medium density fibreboard (MDF)) based on direct load control (DLC) technique in order to reduce the need for LS in frequency restore. To evaluate the proposed model, a real case study including the typical pulp and paper, cement, and MDF industries processes with actual power consumption data is considered. The numerical and graphical results confirm that the proposed CDR can be used as an inexpensive solution to replace the costly spinning reserves and avoid load shedding.