Abstract:
In electrical power systems, expensive peaking
power plants need to be operated to serve the
peak demand. In Sri Lanka, the peak usually
occurs late in the evening, caused by
household demand. Peaking power plants are
expensive to operate, compared with baseload
power plants. Therefore, any electric utility
desires to reduce the peak demand using
demand management techniques. Demand
management efforts in Sri Lanka are limited to
mandatory time of use pricing for medium
and large institutional customers. Household
customers, the dominant customer category in
terms of electricity sales, require to be brought
into the time of use pricing regime. The main
objective of this research was to conduct case
studies to examine whether household
customers are sensitive to price incentives.
Financial incentives and information about
their electricity demand were provided to a
selected number of household customers to
encourage them to reduce electricity use in the
peak period. It was found that the approach
has caused a reduction of the peak-time
demand in all the selected households. This
demand management technique may be
refined and expanded to achieve a significant
change in the load curve. The paper provides
the mathematical formulation of a potential
approach to dynamic pricing. The utility CEB
may further analyses and implement this
demand management approach.
