Quantitative Analysis of Air Conditioner Aggregation for Providing Operating Reserve

With the increasing penetration of renewable energy around the world in recent years, requirements of operating reserve for maintaining system balance have become more and more important. Moreover, the development of information and communication technologies has made flexible demands, such as air conditioners (AC), heat pumps and plug-in electric vehicles provide operating reserve possible. However, characteristics and potential of these flexible demands for providing operating reserve have not been further studied. In this paper, a quantitative analysis method of air conditioner aggregation for providing operating reserve is proposed. Several evaluation indices for evaluating AC aggregation's potential of providing operating are proposed and quantified, including reserve capacity (RC), response time (RT), duration time (DT) and ramp rate (RR). Numerical studies illustrate the proposed method.