Economic opportunities for industrial systems from frequency regulation markets

We analyze economic opportunities for industrial facilities provided by frequency regulation (FR) markets. We use classical frequency domain analysis techniques to characterize the harmonic content of FR signals and to analyze the impact of such harmonics on the response of dynamical systems. The analysis reveals that systems with slow dynamics, as those found in large industrial facilities, are suitable to provide FR capacity because they can naturally damp the dominant high-frequency harmonic content of FR signals. We also propose optimization formulations to quantify the maximum amount of FR capacity that can be provided by a system given its dynamic characteristics, its control architecture. A distillation case study demonstrates that significant economic potential exists for large industrial facilities.