The load characteristic of typical household electrical equipment is elaborately analyzed. Considering the electric vehicles’ (EVs’) charging behavior and air conditioning’s thermodynamic property, an electricity price-based demand response (DR) model and an incentive-based DR model for two kinds of typical high-power electrical equipment are proposed to obtain the load curve considering two different kinds of DR mechanisms. Afterwards, a load shedding strategy is introduced to improve the traditional reliability evaluation method for distribution networks, with the capacity constraints of tie lines taken into account. Subsequently, a reliability calculation method of distribution networks considering the shortage of power supply capacity and outages is presented. Finally, the Monte Carlo method is employed to calculate the reliability index of distribution networks with different load levels, and the impacts of different DR strategies on the reliability of distribution networks are analyzed. The results show that both DR strategies can improve the distribution system reliability.