The key characteristics of smart utilization is to achieve flexible interaction between the power system and end-users by means of energy flow，information flow and business flow.Demand response，as the core business of smart utilization，is now moving toward the automated demand response to achieve information exchange standardization，intelligent decision and implementation automation.Based on the new development conditions confronted by demand response in the smart utilization，this paper proposes a research framework of automated demand response in smart utilization including5modules and20sub-modules，analyzes the research task and its role in the study of the framework，and presents the overall business process of automated demand response.