  With an increasing share of electric energy produced from non-dispatchable
renewable sources both energy storage and demand side management might gain
tremendously in importance. While there has been significant progress in
general properties and technologies of energy storage, the systematic
characterization of features particular to demand side management such as its
intermittent, time-dependent potential seems to be lagging behind. As a
consequence, the development of efficient and sustainable strategies for demand
side management and its integration into large-scale energy system models are
impeded. This work introduces a novel framework for a systematic time-resolved
characterization of the potential for demand side management. It is based on
the specification of individual devices both with respect to their scheduled
demand and their potential of load shifting. On larger scales sector-specific
profiles can straightforwardly be taken into account. The potential for demand
side management is then specified in terms of size and capacity of an
equivalent storage device. This intermediate layer of abstraction isolates the
gross effects and opportunities of demand side management from questions
concerning the operation of individual devices, which eases the integration of
the results in existing schemes for the commitment of production units and
system models. The novel framework is applicable for conceptual or predictive
approaches and for real-time optimization and operation of energy systems
involving demand side management.
