Abstract for: Technological transformation in the electricity sector: How active demand-side management affects residential load curve?

Electricity systems are facing an important technological transformation, which is changing how different stakeholders participate in electricity markets. From the demand perspective, a wide scope of available alternatives increases the opportunity of active residential demand participation. Alternatives include home appliances with technological development that favour an efficient use of electricity; appliances that allow households to change their consumption habits according to hourly electricity prices, for example increasing consumption in the cheapest hours and decreasing demand in the costly hours. New developments also allow consumers to produce their own electricity requirements and storage surpluses, favouring a complete demand self-management in the residential sector. Although this transformation from the demand side may contribute to an efficient electricity system performance in the long term, the lack of knowledge of its implications during the transition may threat the system sustainability. Accordingly, in this paper a system dynamics analysis is developed to understand and analyse the complexity involved in the transformation dynamics on the residential sector and its implications for the market, providing valuable insights for policy design in the electricity sector. Findings indicate that most relevant implications in the residential load curve come from microgeneration compared with those from efficiency and conservation practices.