Decarbonizing the grid: Utilizing demand-side flexibility for carbon emission reduction through locational marginal emissions in distribution networks

Byungkwon Park, Jin Dong, Boming Liu, Teja Kuruganti

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

Decarbonization of the electric grid has become an important world-wide priority and is actively happening in many ways by introducing innovations and new technologies from the generation sectors to the demand sectors. In particular, one promising pathway toward such net-zero carbon emissions is to utilize the demand-side flexibility with the increasing number of flexible loads in distribution networks. In this paper, we explore a load shifting strategy with the emerging concept of location marginal emissions (LMEs) to reduce carbon emissions. LMEs measure the impact of carbon emissions including the locational aspect in more granular way and thus provide a novel mechanism for the system operator and load aggregators to design the LME-based load shifting strategy, which can efficiently guide consumers and thus adjust their consumption behaviors. Simulation case studies on the IEEE test networks are performed to validate the capability of the proposed load shifting method to reduce carbon emissions. We also compare this with other relevant strategies to discuss multiple scenarios and corresponding results. While each provides a different level of flexibility, all the explored strategies tested have led to solutions that have lower carbon emissions, indicating the great potential of demand-side flexibility in reducing carbon emissions for future distribution networks.

Original languageEnglish
Article number120303
JournalApplied Energy
Volume330
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 15 2023

Funding

This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a nonexclusive, paidup, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan).The authors wish to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for providing valuable feedbacks on this work. This work was supported in part by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium (GMLC), DOE Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Building Technology Office, and DOE Office of Electricity. The authors wish to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for providing valuable feedbacks on this work. This work was supported in part by the US Department of Energy (DOE) , Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium (GMLC) , DOE Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Building Technology Office , and DOE Office of Electricity .

Keywords

  • Active distribution network
  • Carbon emissions
  • Decarbonization
  • Demand-side flexibility
  • Load shift
  • Locational marginal emission

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