Agent-Based Simulation of Implicit Demand Response Adoption for Water Distribution System Reservoirs

The electricity production from intermittent renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power, has increased significantly, which requires the electricity grid to be gradually restructured through different approaches. Demand Response (DR) is one of the examples which is applicable to a broad variety of electricity consumers, from households to sizable industrial processes. However, there is a barrier to implement DR in that consumers may not be willing to change their behaviour or invest in energy management technologies without gaining enough monetary benefits from doing so. The purpose of this study is to investigate the behaviour of electricity consumers who are offered implicit DR solutions and to investigate which parameters that characterise the consumers who adopt these solutions. The study applies an agent-based simulation model that uses separate and independent modules for the domain logic, the business solution logic and the DR adoption decision logic, respectively. Furthermore, the case study chosen for the simulation is a population of domestic water distribution system water towers with pumps whose operation can be coordinated with the hourly electricity prices from the day-ahead spot market. The simulation results show that tower/pump pairs on water distribution systems with higher water demands adopt the implicit DR solution faster. The pumping rate and tank capacities do not have significant impact on the adoption, at least not if they are beyond a certain size. Meanwhile, the simulation also finds the maximum investment cost for the implicit DR solution to be 71,000 DKK, if half of a water tower population must adopt the solution within a 5-year ROI period.