Demand Response of Thermostatic Loads by Optimized Switching-Fraction Broadcast

Demand response is an important Smart Grid concept that aims at facilitating the integration of volatile energy resources into the electricity grid. This paper considers the problem of managing large populations of thermostat-based devices with on/off operation. The objective is to enable demand response capabilities within the intrinsic flexibility of the population. A temperature distribution model based on Fokker-Planck partial differential equations is used to capture the behavior of the population. To ensure probability conservation and high accuracy of the numerical solution, Finite Volume Method is used to spatially discretize these equations. Next, a broadcast strategy with two switching-fraction signals is proposed for actuating the population. This is applied in an open-loop scenario for tracking a power reference by running an optimization with a multilinear objective.