HIL-based Distributed Control of Inverter-Air-Conditioner for Power System Frequency Regulation

The goals of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals bring a fast extension of renewable energy such as photovoltaic power(PV) and wind power. While providing abundant clean power, the intermittent output also brings power imbalance problems and results in frequency fluctuation and power shortage. Since the demotion of traditional power generators reduces their regulation ability in power balancing, demand side load is considered a satisfactory regulation resource. Inverter air conditioners(IAC) are a widely approved demand response resource because of their flexibility, universality, and ability to maintain customers' comfort. With a great amount of IAC implemented, adopting a reasonable control strategy is important. Centralized control is a commonly used method; however, to develop the communication efficiency and extensibility potential of IAC in larger city scenarios, this paper proposed a Hardware-In-the-Loop(HIL) distributed control method for IAC participating frequency regulation demand response service with Breadth First Search(BFS) strategy based on the Realtime Digital Simulator(RTDS) platform. The HIL clients are Raspberry Pi- 4B and ESP8266 chips, implemented with the IAC model for demand response service.