Abstract

A prominent feature of the smart grid is to involve the consumer side in balancing effort, rather than placing the entire burden of maintaining this balance on the producers. This thesis investigates the utilization of flexible consumers in the future smart grid. The focus of this work is on industrial consumers. We propose a three-level hierarchical control framework, in which a so-called “Aggregator” is located between a number of flexible industrial demands and a grid operator. The aggregator is the heart of this setup, with the task of handling the energy/power services can be derived from the demand that these consumers represent. The exact responsibility of the aggregator, however, can vary depending on several factors such as control strategies, demand types, provided services etc. This thesis addresses the aggregator design for a specific class of consumers. The work involves selecting an appropriate control scenario, formulating the optimal objective function at the aggregator, modeling the flexibility of our specific case studies and determining the required information flow. This thesis also investigates different types of aggregation, when we have different types of consumers or the consumers are of a same type. We provide a comparison between heterogeneous and homogeneous aggregation of the consumers.
Eventually, this thesis describes an industrial scale experimental setup for evaluating the proposed aggregator. The aggregator aims to provide a distribution grid service from the industrial thermal loads. Our case studies are a supermarket refrigeration system and an HVAC chiller in conjunction with an ice storage which are virtually connected to the aggregator. Practical results obtained from testing on real industrial consumers demonstrate the theoretical studies to a satisfactory level.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
Udgiver
ISBN'er, trykt978-87-7152-062-0
StatusUdgivet - 2015

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