Decarbonisation of heat and transport will cause congestion issues in distribution networks. To avoid expensive network investments, demand flexibility is necessary to move loads from peak to off-peak periods. We provide a method and metric for assessing and selecting the optimal demand response strategy for a given network congestion scenario and applied it to a case study network in Coleraine, Northern Ireland. We proposed a Price Approximation/Mean Grouping strategy to deal with the issue of congestions occurring at the lowest-price period in real-time pricing schemes. The Mean Grouping strategy increased the average lowest-price hours from 1.32 to 3.76. We show that a three-cluster tariff is effective in solving medium congestion issues in Northern Ireland and could save consumers an average of £117/year on their heating bill. However, for networks with low headroom suffering from serious congestion issues, a smart control strategy is needed.
Two-tier demand response with flexible demand swap and transactive control for real-time congestion management in distribution networks