Corrective Evaluation of Response Capabilities of Flexible Demand-Side Resources Considering Communication Delay in Smart Grids

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors, there are some parts in the article that need improvement.

1) Introduction: In the introductory part and in figure 1, your article meets the specific requirements for future communications (in the energy field). I would add that communications can also be used for data exchange to have less impact of electric vehicles on the electricity grid (G2V, V2G protocol). I'll include a link where the need for communication for energy management is fundamental (EV, PV, ES) and integrates well into your work:

https://doi.org/10.3390/en16031213

2) Insert into the text the letter used in equation 1 for the "ratio of the duration of high latency". To check and add.

3) In several parts of the paper the acronym of the formulas described are missing. Check the paper and add.

4) The paper is missing a "Pseudo-code", where the "Input" data and the "Result" output data and the parts to be calculated are reported. To be added.

5) In paragraph 4: Example analysis, a figure of the configuration is missing, what data is to be used and/or exchanged, what is processed, etc. I recommend including a figure or flowchart with references to the equations used for the calculation.

6) The results obtained must be better commented. To be added.

7) What is the advantage/disadvantage of this technique? What is the limit of this technique? What is the task refresh rate? Is the delay affected by connected devices? Is the system robust to data errors? There is a lot of information missing that needs to be added in the paper.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English is fine

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper regards the communication delay for flexible demand-side management. The topic is relevant and innovative and the proposed approach is interesting, nevertheless the document could be improved considering the following suggestions:

- the literature review should be enlarged surveying the exisiting flexibility markets and the already in place demand side management, 

- subsection 3.2 basically presents an AC model, however, this model is not clearly referenced neither demostrated comparing model results with any measurements. Given that these assumptions are significant for the paper presentation, I would suggest to improve this section.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper proposes a method to evaluate and correct the response capabilities of demand-side resources, specifically air conditioners, in smart grids considering communication delays. The topic of communication delays within the energy management concept is interesting and timely. The manuscript is generally well prepared but important concerns should be sufficiently addressed. All the following comments should be addressed:

1. The full term for Message Queuing Telemetry Transport should be added before its use as MQTT in the abstract.

2. Why the work chooses MQTT specifically for this context and not other protocols like CoAP or AMQP? A description should be added to the paper about this.

3. On page 11, the confidence interval for response potential uses a constant χ=0.5. Where does this value come from?

4. it is not completely clear that does the high latency rate affect all devices uniformly or are there specific characteristics (e.g., device type, location etc.) that influence its impact more significantly?

5. The model for split air conditioners simplifies several factors (for exmple constant building parameters etc.). Doesn’t this affect the accuracy of the model under real-world conditions?

6. How does the model account for user behavior variability in response to incentives, or other types of uncertainties? There are various recent studies that addressed the integration of different flexible demand side resources under uncertainty and real-time conditions. For example, the works in (the references that can be cited and discussed in the paper) https://doi.org/10.23919/ECC55457.2022.9837962 , and https://doi.org/10.1109/TII.2017.2772088 use advanced methods to manage uncertainties in user behavior, communication, demands, etc. and optimize system performance dynamically within energy management systems. The manuscript should at least include a discussion of such works and highlight the benefits of your strategy. Could you also briefly talk about how the inclusion of such strategies might improve the robustness of your model?

7. some figures like Fig 5 need axis labels and units for better clarity. And also I am unclear how do the curves in Fig 5 quantitatively illustrate the impact of latency?

8. The study focuses on air conditioning units. Do the findings can be apply to other types of flexible demand-side resources?

9. With increasing the number of smart devices, is the model enough scalable with a higher number of connected devices?

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The manuscript requires minor editing for English for some typo and grammatical mistakes.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear authors, thank you for the changes to the paper. Now the paper is fine.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

English is fine.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors addressed all the comments and suggestions of the reviewer.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Responses to my comments are sufficient. The manuscript has significantly improved. I have no more comments.