Coordinated control strategy of air-conditioning loads for power system balancing

In this paper a coordinated control strategy of air-conditioning load groups is proposed to help correct imbalances between load and generation, especially when the power system is under stressed conditions such as the loss of power generation. Firstly, a decentralized air-conditioning load group control strategy (control mode 1) is presented accounting for maintenance of load diversity, so that the large oscillations of aggregated power of load group caused by diversity loss can be avoided. However, there is an unwanted parasitic "power peak" in the control mode 1. To eliminate the negative effects of the "power peak", another load control strategy (control mode 2) is borrowed from the literature which requires to communicate with the control center. Both of the control modes 1 and 2 adopt a segmental load recovery scheme to avoid "recovery peak". Then, a coordinated load control strategy is presented to coordinate the control modes 1 and 2. The "power peak" in control mode 1 is used as the power control objective for the load group of the control mode 2, and the control signal for control mode 2 can be calculated using the dichotomy method. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed coordinated control strategy of air-conditioning loads for power system balancing.