Use of Inverter-Based Air Conditioners to Provide Voltage Regulation Services in Unbalanced Distribution Networks

The large-scale integration of photovoltaic generation and electric vehicles results in over-voltage, under-voltage, and voltage unbalance problems in three-phase distribution networks. The power consumption of the air conditioners (ACs) is large among the daily electrical appliances and can be regulated to provide voltage regulation services. To protect occupants’ privacy and utilize the existing dispatch strategy of the battery, we propose a thermal battery equivalent model of the inverter-based AC to regulate the active power and provide a voltage regulation service. Moreover, an improved Newton-Raphson power-flow algorithm is developed to reduce the computational burden. The affinity propagation method is applied to cluster ACs according to different operating states. Thus, the ACs’ operating frequencies are adjusted to reset the corresponding operating power. The feasibility of the thermal battery equivalent model and voltage regulation algorithm is verified based on case studies utilizing the revised IEEE 33-node three-phase power distribution network.