Grid control with LED lamps

Renewable energy supply is worldwide emerging. The aim is a 100% supply with renewable energies. This way, conventional electrical power generators will be replaced by decentralized power sources, which feed in power to the grid using electrical power converters. Rotating inertia and speed controllers used for the control of the power grid will disappear and must be replaced by a suitable control of the future grid devices. However, not only feed in devices may contribute to the grid control, but also electrical loads may contribute their part.In this publication options to use LED lamps as variable loads are investigated. As a comparison, the brightness of incandescent lamps (“light bulbs”) may vary approximately +/ 20% of their nominal power at +/ 10% of the nominal voltage. It is known that slow variations of the lamp brightness are not perceived by users. Here, suitable ramp rates are determined by a survey with a number of test persons in Köln, Germany, and Hong Kong. It turned out that the possible ramp rates and the possible power change, which are not perceivable, can be a significant fraction of the nominal lamp power, such that Primary Control Power and Fast Frequency Control might be provided with LED lamps.