Demand response (DR) is often studied from the consumer point of view to achieve economic benefits, especially when dealing with prosumers. However, DR may also be promoted by the grid manager to optimize the supply system. This study aims at addressing the impacts of these possible conflicting perspectives, in isolated microgrids in presence of centralized versus local renewable energy (RE) generation. Terceira Island in Azores is used as case study. First, DR is optimized through genetic algorithms to decrease the grid operation costs. Second, DR is optimized through linear programming to decrease direct prosumer costs, assessing also the corresponding impact on the grid. As output for both, the economic dispatch costs, renewable share and emissions are compared. Results show that DR optimization from the microgrid point of view lead to 1.9% savings on dispatch costs and emissions, while representing an increase of 5.4% regarding the renewable share. On the other hand, the optimization considering the prosumer interest resulted in 1.3% savings for the islands dispatch costs and a 3.2% increase on the renewable share. As such, although both optimizations lead to better grid management, they still show different impacts, urging a common approach for local RE deployment on isolated systems.
