Task-Oriented Communication for Real-Time Demand Response in Smart Grids

With the rapid development of smart grids, Demand Response Management (DRM) is expected to become the most effective and reliable solution to reduce peak load in electricity grids for adaptation of fluctuating electricity supply. It aims to shape the users' electricity loads by exchanging information in real time between the power utility and demand sides. Thus, a real-time communication mechanism needs to be designed for information transmission in demand response. In this paper, we propose a task-oriented communication mechanism to balance the electricity load and supply as quickly as possible in real-time demand response. The cumulative mean square error (MSE) between the electricity load and supply is defined as the performance metric of the designed communication mechanism. On this basis, both centralized direct control and distributed control through electricity price have been considered in demand response. Under these control mechanisms, task-oriented incremental source coding is introduced for the minimization of cumulative MSE between the electricity load and supply. Finally, numerical results are presented to show the potential of our proposed incremental source coding mechanism for real-time demand response.