A Real-time Control Strategy of Air Conditioner Clusters for Slow Reserve Service

Air conditioner clusters (ACCs) could provide slow reserve service through the load aggregators or virtual power plants. How to develop a real-time control strategy that meets the response speed and accuracy requirements is one of the key technical issues in the operation stage. A real-time control (RTC) strategy which could track the hour-level slow reserve service is proposed in this paper. The dynamic response performance (DRP) indicators are developed based on the wide-range transport model. Then the RTC strategy considering the different response characteristics of ACCs under different rules is developed. Besides, the control preference matrix is designed to reduce the repeated switch actions of the controller. The proposed RTC strategy could take consideration the inherent DRP of ACCs, and it could track the hour-level power increase or decrease curve stably. It could also reduce the switch number significantly. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.