  With the ongoing integration of Renewable Energy Sources (RES), the
complexity of power grids is increasing. Due to the fluctuating nature of RES,
ensuring the reliability of power grids can be challenging. One possible
approach for addressing these challenges is Demand Response (DR) which is
described as matching the demand for electrical energy according to the changes
and the availability of supply. However, implementing a DR system to monitor
and control a broad set of electrical appliances in real-time introduces
several new complications, including ensuring the reliability and financial
feasibility of the system. In this work, we address these issues by designing
and implementing a distributed real-time DR infrastructure for laptops, which
estimates and controls the power consumption of a network of connected laptops
in response to the fast, irregular changes of RES. Furthermore, since our
approach is entirely software-based, we dramatically reduce the initial costs
of the demand side participants. The result of our field experiments confirms
that our system successfully schedules and executes rapid and effective DR
events. However, the accuracy of the estimated power consumption of all
participating laptops is relatively low, directly caused by our software-based
approach.
