IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - March/April 2014 - 30

Demand-Side Management

Load (GW)

The development of renewable energy sources, generally
intermittent in nature, leads to more variability in the electrical supply. Furthermore, French electrical consumption is
affected by a significant sensitivity to temperature due to the
widespread use of electric heaters; in particular, winter load
peaks are increasing. The peak load has increased by 33%
in ten years and exceeded 100,000 mw in 2012. with the
development of new technologies, new appliances and thus
new uses (lcD screens, multimedia, telecom boxes, and
even electric vehicles) have emerged or are emerging. This
fact makes electricity consumption more volatile.
The process of balancing supply and demand is complex:
the challenge is to adapt a more and more fluctuating pattern
of electrical generation to a more and more variable pattern
of consumption. it is therefore essential to move toward a
more flexible management of the supply-demand balance
and, in particular, to more flexible electricity consumption.

Delay

many uses of electricity (industrial, commercial, and
residential) could be shifted to other times of day to provide more flexibility to the electrical system. This requires
the cooperation of transmission and distribution operators,
consumers, electricity suppliers, and stakeholders in digital communication technology, among others. new storage
facilities should also play an important role in the development of system flexibility.
For several years, rTe has been supporting the flexibility
of consumption and demand-side management with the goal
of allowing industrial and residential consumers to adjust
their consumption and participate in the achievement of system balance. market mechanisms and operational planning
tools have also evolved to develop demand-side management
(see Figure 4). rTe is also involved in several French smart
grid demonstrations that aim to develop and test technological solutions (including smart meters, storage, and the intelligent charging of electric vehicles) and also to provide global
cost-benefit analyses. by giving energy users the opportunity
to manage their power consumption and budgets, these demonstrations seek to turn passive consumers into active ones.
rTe's ecowatt and éco2mix initiatives follow this same
goal. ecowatt is based on voluntary participation and aims to
encourage residents to reduce their electricity consumption during peak periods, especially in winter during the morning and
between 6 and 8 p.m. when the network reaches its limits, the
participants receive an alert (via e-mail or sms). in brittany,
where the security of supply can be difficult in winter, more than

Load (GW)

excursions in response to contingencies due to their inherent
physical inertia; they also provide high short-circuit currents
that are used for fault detection. in contrast, power electronics connections, while they provide additional flexibility,
have no direct physical link to frequency and cannot provide
short-circuit current above their rated values. The operation
principles of future systems will therefore need to be revised
to mitigate these effects. rTe will push for and participate in
research projects that will address these issues.

Hour
(b)
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Hour
(a)

Reduce

Smo
S
Sm
Smooth
moot
mo
oth
oth
th
Hour
(d)

Spread
S
pread

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(c)
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A
Adv
va e
vanc
Advance

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Inject

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(f)

figure 4. Various types of demand-side management (source: RTE).

ieee power & energy magazine

march/april 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - March/April 2014