Abstract
Inverter air conditioners (ACs) account for a large proportion of air conditioning loads in many countries and, thus, contribute significantly to the peak loads in these areas, especially in summer. On the other hand, as an important category of thermostatically controlled load with thermal energy storage capability, inverter ACs also have the potential to provide considerable flexibility for electric power systems that are faced with increasing challenges posed by high penetration of renewable power generation. This paper focuses on the demand response from the control of the aggregated inverter ACs for load reduction. A virtual energy storage system (VESS) model that encapsulates the room with an inverter AC was established based on the electric model of an inverter AC and the thermodynamic model of a room. Based on the VESS model, a virtual state of charge (VSOC) priority-based load reduction control method with temperature holding and linear recovery strategies was proposed. The VSOC priority based control was designed to decrease the negative impact of load reduction on customers’ thermal comfort from the perspective of the whole AC population. The temperature holding strategy was designed to reduce the electric power of an AC while ensuring that the indoor temperature is always below the allowable limit. The linear recover strategy was proposed to reduce the load rebound after load reduction. Four cases were studied regarding the operation and load reduction of the 100 inverter ACs, and the simulation results verified the models established and the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed load reduction control method.
Highlights
With the global consensus on preventing global warming and boosting sustainable development, there is a rapidly increasing penetration of renewable power generation in electric power systems
Similar to that in [19], this paper models the space with inverter air conditioners (ACs) as virtual energy storage systems (VESSs), but based on this model, this paper further proposes to control the ACs according to the descending order of virtual state of charge (VSOC) of VESSs
With the temperature holding strategy proposed in this paper, during the load reduction, the power utility will override the inherent control of the inverter AC, and instruct the inverter AC to operate at a fixed frequency which maintains the current indoor temperature unchanged
Summary
With the global consensus on preventing global warming and boosting sustainable development, there is a rapidly increasing penetration of renewable power generation in electric power systems. Compared to single speed ACs, the compressor of an inverter AC is able to operate at variable speeds, and inverter ACs have some advantages including 1) higher comfort level because the indoor temperature is maintained within a narrow band around the set point, 2) lower power consumption when thermostatically operating around the set point [13], and 3) better performance during startup, grid voltage variation and locked-rotor periods [13] In this context, some preliminary research has been conducted regarding the demand response from inverter ACs, which could be further classified into three categories.
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