Design Science in Practice: Designing an Electricity Demand Response System

Information Systems play an important role in achieving sustainable solutions for the global economy. In particular, Information Systems are inevitable when it comes to the transition from the “current” to the “smart” power grid. This enables an improved balancing of both electricity supply and demand, by shifting load – based on the projected supply gap and electricity prices – on the demand side smartly. As this requires a specific Information System, namely a Demand Response system, we address the challenge of designing such a system by utilizing the design science approach: determining general requirements, deducing the corresponding information requirements, analyzing the information flow, designing a suitable Information System, demonstrating its capability, and, finally, evaluating the design. The design process is reiterated fully until a viable solution, i.e. an IS artifact, has been developed. This paper describes both the design process as such and the final IS artifact. Moreover, we summarize our lessons learnt from using and adopting the design science approach within this practical, bottom-up case study.