Aggregated Control of Smart Building Units for Frequency Regulation in Multi-Region Power Systems

Abstract

The grid frequency regulation is a challenging problem in power systems with high renewable penetration. The smart building units (SBUs) consisting of thermostatically-controlled loads have the capability to participate the grid ancillary service considering the users’ comfort level. This paper presents a distributed aggregation control framework for multiple SBUs in a residential community, so that they can be utilized for grid frequency regulation. The proposed method is designed by using a finite-time distributed leader-follower consensus control. A leader control with two-control mode is proposed, which includes (i) frequency regulation mode (ii) comfort restoration mode. The leader control will determine the references of power and comfort state for the aggregated SBU. With the proposed method, the aggregated SBUs will be capable to track power reference and recover energy state in finite-time. The presented aggregation approach can effectively improve the frequency stability with consensus state sharing in SBUs. We have tested the capability of the developed control scheme in a three-region power system under different scenarios.