Co-benefits between energy efficiency and demand-response on renewable-based energy systems

Abstract

Driven by the recent trends towards a smart power system configuration, there has been a greater focus within the literature on the integration between supply and demand-side resources. The contribution of this research is multifold since it provides a timely and required study, offering valuable insights into how the integration be-tween Demand-Side Management (DSM) resources with clean energy supply options might affect the long-term power planning strategies in high-renewable electricity systems. The innovative aspects of this study are strongly related to a framework proposal for assessing the co-benefits between energy efficiency and demand-response on renewable-based energy systems from a long-term perspective using a co-optimization modelling approach. Overall, the results indicate that a clear benefit of implementing DSM strategies is the percentage reduction of the new installed capacity (-1.0% to-20.6%), CO2 emissions (-2.4% to-11.8%), and total system costs (-0.5% to-15.8%) for all scenarios compared to Business-As-Usual scenario. The evidence from this study suggests that investments in Energy Efficiency (EE) seem more economically valuable than investing only in Demand-Response (DR) strategies. However, integrating EE and DR would empower the overall power system benefits. Strong evidence for a higher potential to delay investments was found for all scenarios for the first ten years of the planning period. Our findings might provide valuable insights to both governments and policy-makers by delivering supportive information in scaling up EE investments. The methodology proposed offers essential contributions to the scientific community and would benefit energy systems research beyond the cases addressed in this paper.