Uncertainty-aware day-ahead scheduling of microgrids considering response fatigue: An IGDT approach

The implantation of demand response programs may be unsuccessful due to a variety of reasons. One of the most important is the so-called response fatigue, which refers to the discouragement experienced by consumers when they received an excessive number of signals from the operator. This circumstance is, however, typically ignored in energy management tools of electrical energy systems. To solve this issue, this paper proposes an uncertainty-aware day-ahead optimal scheduling tool for grid-connected microgrids based on information gap decision theory, which incorporates additional constraints to bound the duration of demand response signals. Thereby, the harmful effects caused by response fatigue are lessened. The developed optimization problem is formulated as a Mixed-Integer-Linear programming, which is solvable using standard solvers and versatile enough to be adapted to different system layouts. A benchmark case study serves to show the effectiveness of the developed methodology to manage with uncertainties, while the effect of response fatigue in consumers is bounded to acceptable thresholds. As a sake of example, the developed methodology is able to determine a scheduling plan with a total renewable generation 50% lower compared with the deterministic case, while the total demand is overestimated by ∼20%, in which the effect of response fatigue is kept within acceptable bounds yet. Accurateness and efficiency of the new proposal are also checked by making a comparison with other uncertainties modelling.