The Reactions of Customers in Turkey Towards Load Shifting Based Demand Side Management in Smart Grids

Technical studies on smart grids have been underway all over the world and in Turkey. One of the most important features that distinguishes the smart grids from conventional electrical grids the distributed generation structure of the smart grids. Therefore, demand side management (DSM) studies are one of the prominent research topics in today’s power distribution networks. In the smart grids, “consumption follows generation” paradigm is adopted by means of DSM instead of the “generation follows consumption” paradigm in conventional electrical grids. While progressing technical and academic studies on the smart grid and demand-side management, it is important to investigate the perspective of consumers, who are one of the important stakeholders in the implementation phase of the smart grids. In this study, reactions and attitudes of customers in Turkey towards load shifting based demand side management in the smart grids are presented using results of a public survey, which is implemented in Istanbul. The presented results are obtained through statistical frequency analysis of the public survey data. The findings would contribute to the development of the smart grid studies and demand-side management policies in Turkey.