WIDE-AREA CONTROL SYSTEM FOR BALANCE-ENERGY PROVISION BY ENERGY CONSUMERS

This paper focuses on wide-area control systems for that Internet-based communication, although being the only economically feasible option for communication, is insufficient for reliability or transmission delay reasons. An example for such a control system is the modern electricity system, which is currently changing from the traditional hierarchical to a more and more peer-to-peer oriented structure, and thus having growing demands for modern IT and control solutions. While up to now consumers were considered passive players, a new generation of automated demand response emerges, where consumers can react on real-time prices, on grid parameters like frequency or on transport schedules, in terms of their energy consumption. For enabling these features, a robust wide-area control infrastructure has to be developed, that allows for low delay transmission of control commands and measurement data. Further, it is critical to find simple and consistent models of the involved processes to design the respective control infrastructure according to its needs. This paper describes a novel approach for the design of distributed wide-area control systems that utilises process-specific parameters (here: grid frequency changes) as a new means of fast and reliable communication besides conventional communication channels. Copyright © 2007 IFAC