A Survey on Information Communication Technologies in Modern Demand-Side Management for Smart Grids: Challenges, Solutions, and Opportunities

TLDR

The energy transition demands new interaction models to manage energy and data sustainably, resiliently, and securely, with demand‑side management (DSM) as a key enabler that balances consumer comfort, grid stability, and environmental goals. This review surveys DSM methodologies for modern power grids and identifies future research directions to enhance data analytics, cybersecurity, and market liberalization. The authors categorize and discuss various DSM approaches, providing a framework for evaluating studies in the context of modern grids. The review highlights open issues in standardization, regulation, data privacy, and cybersecurity that impact modern DSM.

Abstract

The energy transition-revolution paradigm is coming with a new vision of interaction models to smartly manage the energy and data exchanged between all participants in the whole power system with solid regard to sustainability, resilience, cybersecurity, and privacy. Added to the switching from fossil to renewable power sources, the demand-side management (DSM), which is a mix of software and hardware models with data analytics capabilities, is a crucial enabler of the energy transaction. More than the demand-response functionalities, the DSM includes the overall management of the grid infrastructure while minimizing consumers’ discomfort and maximizing the grid stability with respect to environmental commitments. This article reviews the application of several methodologies for DSM within the context of modern power grids. Existing DSM approaches are described and categorized while offering informative discussions to help reason through all considered studies. Future research avenues are pointed by suggesting DSM improvements for the context of the global trends in data analysis/cybersecurity for liberalizing electricity markets based on energy transactions and DSM-based communities, especially for smart cities. The standardization, the regulations, the data privacy, the cybersecurity issues, and their contributions to the energy system were reviewed as open issues in the context of a modern DSM.