Dynamic pricing as control mechanism

Response of demand, distributed generation and electricity storage (e.g. vehicle to grid) will be crucial for power systems management in the future smart electricity grid. Currently, demand response approaches are predominantly based on one-way signalling from the utility to the end-customer's devices and installations. However, this approach leads to a suboptimal solution as it does not unlock the full flexibility potential of these devices. On top of that, it leads to market inefficiencies and uncertainty in the price response of end-customer's demand and supply units when applied on a mass scale. These drawbacks are not present when the responsive end-customer's systems are fully integrated in the electricity markets. In this paper, we describe a smart grid technology that integrates demand and supply flexibility in the operation of the electricity system, rather than just letting it respond. Over the last few years, this technology has been researched and developed into a market-ready system, and has been deployed in a number of successful field trials. Using this approach, the pool reaction to a certain price signal is known beforehand. With that, demand response moves from influencing, with an uncertain overall response, into control with the dynamic price as a control signal.