Aggregated Modeling and Control of Air Conditioning Loads for Demand Response

Demand response is playing an increasingly important role in the efficient and reliable operation of the electric grid. Modeling the dynamic behavior of a large population of responsive loads is especially important to evaluate the effectiveness of various demand response strategies. In this paper, a highly accurate aggregated model is developed for a population of air conditioning loads. The model effectively includes statistical information of the load population, systematically deals with load heterogeneity, and accounts for second-order dynamics necessary to accurately capture the transient dynamics in the collective response. Based on the model, a novel aggregated control strategy is designed for the load population under realistic conditions. The proposed controller is fully responsive and achieves the control objective without sacrificing end-use performance. The proposed aggregated modeling and control strategy is validated through realistic simulations using GridLAB-D. Extensive simulation results indicate that the proposed approach can effectively manage a large number of air conditioning systems to provide various demand response services, such as frequency regulation and peak load reduction.