Simulation models for evaluation of network design and hierarchical transactive control mechanisms in Smart Grids

Abstract

Smart-grid technologies seek to enhance the electri cal grid's efficiency by introducing bi-directional communication and dynamic adaptive control between energy suppliers and consumers. We develop a large-scale network simulation model for evaluating such a hierarchical transactive control system that is part of our work on the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project. The transactive control system communicates local supply conditions using incentive signals and load adjustment responses using feedback signals in a distributed fashion in order to match the consumer-desired load to the utility desired supply scenario. We study the system protocol and a dynamic control mechanism that is implied by the design under a reasonable collection of models that capture load variation, stochastic signal losses, consumer fatigue to demand response and certain 'stickiness' criterion on the control signals that arise out of physical constraints. Our results indicate that the control mechanism can perform adequately in adjusting the aggregate supply-demand mismatch, and is robust to steady transactive signal losses.Index Terms-smart grid, demand response, transactive con trol, discrete-event network simulator

Transactive energy: A review of state of the art and implementation

“…A large-scale network simulation model is developed in [14] for the hierarchical transactive control system evaluation. The proposed network simulation model illustrates how transactive control can be used to manage the distribution problem of peak demand, and improve system efficiency and reliability at a large scale.…”

“…3. Two-level transactive control system architecture [14] Besides, the costs and benefits of renewables for all market participants using the GridWise transactive energy framework [3] are classified in [15]. Reference [16] reports on the preliminary findings of a residential demand response demonstration that uses the bidding transactions of supply and end-use air conditioning resources communicating with a real-time market to balance the various needs of the participants on a distribution feeder.…”

Load synchronization and sustained oscillations induced by transactive control

“…These strategies typically use either direct control via set-point variation [2], [6] or probabilistic switching-based distributed control [4]. Another stream of recent work employs market-based coordination strategies or a so-called transactive energy control framework to manage the aggregate demand of a large number of electric loads [7]- [13]. Risks related to load synchronization and cold load pick up are discussed in [14]- [16] in the context of direct load control, but there has been limited work to investigate such risks under market coordination strategies.…”

“…Transactive control (TC) demonstration projects have shown that with residential loads market-based coordination strategies can reduce utility demand and congestion at peak times [7], [8], [10], [11]. An optimization problem has been formulated in [10] where the coordinator first makes control decisions to maximize the social welfare, and then the individual users choose energy consumption to maximize individual utility based on the coordinator's control decisions.…”

“…To achieve this objective, the transactive coordination mechanism [7], [10], [11] has been adopoted and applied to a population of TCLs. We present a modified TCL switching logic that takes into account market coordination signals, alongside the natural switching conditions.…”