A Fair Selection Strategy for Residential Demand Response Participants

Demand Response (DR) in the residential sector is a key facilitator of the energy transition, enabling consumers to assume a more active role in the efficient operation of the grid, whereas aggregators assume an important role in its realization. However, the wider adoption of residential demand-side flexibility faces several barriers, where low end-users engagement further increases the uncertainty around the estimation of residential DR market potential. Stimulated by the emerging need to increase end-users willingness to participate in DR programs, an innovative strategy for residential aggregators is being proposed, introducing fairness in the participants’ selection methodology. The proposed framework takes into consideration reliability indicators, such as efficiency in flexibility delivery and events participation, as well as the level of inclusion (fairness) at a participant level. Case studies using a real residential data set indicate that when fairness-in-participation is considered, the same flexibility target can be obtained accompanied by the inclusion of all potential resources, when compared to an exclusively performance-based participants’ selection methodology where only a few end-users are being constantly selected.