Coordination of Distributed Energy Resources for Provision of Ancillary Services: Architectures and Algorithms

Introduction

On the distribution side of a power system, there are many distributed energy resources (DERs), e.g., photovoltaic (PV) installations, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs), that can be potentially used to provide ancillary services, e.g., reactive power support for voltage control (see, e.g., Turitsyn et al. (2011) and the references therein) and active power up and down regulation for frequency control (see, e.g., Callaway and Hiskens (2011) and the references therein). To enable DERs to provide ancillary services, it is necessary to develop appropriate control and coordination mechanisms. One potential solution relies on a centralized control architecture in which each DER is directly coordinated by (and communicates with) a central decision maker. An alternative approach is to distribute the decision making, which obviates the need for a central decision maker to coordinate the DERs. In both cases, the decision making...