Safe Coordination of Thermostatically Controlled Loads for Grid Services

PASSCODE: RUD0cj

As renewable energy sources are rapidly integrated into power grids, they introduce significant uncertainty due to the intermittent nature of wind and solar power generation. Distributed energy resources (DERs) provide a promising solution to manage this variability, as their combined capacity can offer substantial flexibility and enhance grid reliability by providing grid services. Throughout these services, some operational constraints on both individual DER and distribution networks must always be maintained. A key challenge is that third-party aggregators, responsible for coordinating DERs in the U.S., lack access to private network and DER information, which makes it difficult for them to evaluate the impacts of their actions.

This dissertation addresses these challenges by developing control algorithms for third-party aggregators that ensure operational constraint satisfaction. We adopt a specific framework wherein the Distributed System Operator sends constraints on either aggregator’s action or network-level behavior of the DERs for the safe operation of the distribution network. Within this framework, we devise control algorithms that provide formal guarantees of constraint satisfaction, utilizing tools from control engineering and formal methods. While our approaches are not limited to specific types of DERs, this dissertation primarily focuses on algorithms for a collection of TCLs.

CO-CHAIRS: Professor Necmiye Ozay & Professor Johanna L. Mathieu