Utilizing Demand Response to Improve Network Reliability and Ageing Resilience

Increasing operation flexibility and resilience at uncertainties is an everlasting challenge for existing power networks. Emergency loadings and probabilistic thermal ratings are traditionally deployed on overhead lines (OHLs) to provide network operators with such flexibility. The challenge is to quantify the impact of these operating practices on the OHL conductor ageing risks, but only a few investigations exist on potential solutions to enhance flexibility whilst minimizing ageing risks by employing demand response. This paper presents a probabilistic modeling approach that uses a two-objective optimization function to minimize network's OHLs ageing and maximize its reliability at uncertainties by utilizing the available demand response at emergencies. Hence, the proposed optimization provides the operator with the flexibility to tradeoff between ageing and reliability costs against demand response costs. A predefined expected equivalent network ageing index is formulated to relate component ageing with available network demand response. The study of the proposed framework on the 24-bus IEEE-RTS resulted in more than 30% reduction of the network's expected energy not supplied and interruption costs, whilst halving the overall network ageing. Demand response, thus, can have a significant impact on reducing ageing and maintenance costs at critical lines.