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Fundamentally, two main methodologies are used to reduce the electric energy bill in residential, commercial, and even industrial applications. The first method is to act on the supply side by integrating alternative means of power generation, such as renewable energy generators, having a relatively low levelized cost of energy. Whereas, the second methodology focuses on the management of the load to minimize the overall paid cost for energy. Thus, this article highlights the importance of demand side management by comparing it to the supply side management having, as criteria, the total achieved savings on the overall annual energy bill of a residential microgrid supplied by two power sources and equipped with an electric vehicle. The optimization takes into consideration the cost of kWh that is paid by the prosumer based on an economical model having as inputs the outcomes of the energy model. The adopted energy model integrates, on the demand side, an intelligent energy management system acting on secondary loads, and on the supply side, a photovoltaic (PV) system with and without battery energy storage system (BESS). The outcome of this work shows that, under the right circumstances, demand side management can be as valuable as supply side control.

Global economic growth, demographic explosion, digitization, increased mobility, and greater demand for heating and cooling due to climate change in different world areas are the main drivers for the surge in energy demand. The increase in energy demand is the basis of economic challenges for power companies alongside several socio-economic problems in communities, such as energy poverty, defined as the insufficient coverage of energy needs, especially in the residential sector. Two main strategies are considered to meet this increased demand. The first strategy focuses on new sustainable and eco-friendly modes of power generation, such as renewable energy resources and distributed energy resources. The second strategy is demand-side oriented rather than the supply side. Demand-side management, demand response (DR), and energy efficiency (EE) programs fall under this category. On the other hand, the decentralization and digitization of the energy sector convoyed by the emersion of new technologies such as blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial Intelligence (AI), opened the door to new solutions for the energy demand dilemma. Among these technologies, blockchain has proved itself as a decentralized trading platform between untrusted peers without the involvement of a trusted third party. This newly introduced Peer-to-Peer (P2P) trading model can be used to create a new demand load control model. In this article, the concept of an energy cap and trade demand-side management (DSM) model is introduced and simulated. The introduced DSM model is based on the concept of capping consumers’ monthly energy consumption and rewarding consumers who do not exceed this cap with energy tradeable credits that can be traded using blockchain-based Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading. A model based on 200 households is used to simulate the proposed DSM model and prove that this model can be beneficial to both energy companies and consumers.

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