Effects of Network Tariffs on Residential Distribution Systems and Price-Responsive Customers Under Hourly Electricity Pricing

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate how network tariffs, such as the traditional energy-based network tariff (EBT) and power-based network tariffs (PBT), would affect the distribution system and the customers' incentives to schedule their demand under an hourly electricity pricing scheme. For this purpose, a mixed integer linear programming model has been developed and used in a case study to schedule the load demand for 100 residential customers with the objective being minimization of their electricity cost. The results have shown that by scheduling the flexible loads, customers could save up to (sic)119/year under EBT and (sic)127/year under PBT. If more than 25% of the customers were price-responsive under the EBT, the peak demand could be increased, while it could be reduced by 4% if all customers were responsive under the PBT. With plug-in electric vehicles, the possible benefits were found to be higher for both customers and the distribution system operator for the case with PBT compared with EBT.