PSERC Webinar - Power System Level Impacts of Plug-In Hybrid Vehicles

A PSERC Public Webinar

Access to the webcast here

This talk presented new methods to model and control the aggregated power demand from a population of thermostatically controlled loads. The control objective is to produce relatively short time scale responses (hourly to sub-hourly) for ancillary services such as load following and regulation. The control signal is applied by manipulation of temperature set points. The methods leverage the existence of system diversity and use physically-based load models to inform the development of a new theoretical model that accurately predicts - even when the system is not in equilibrium - changes in load resulting from changes in thermostat temperature set points. Insight into the transient dynamics that result from set point changes is developed by deriving a new exact solution to a well-known hybrid state aggregated load model. A straightforward minimum variance control law is developed and it is shown that the high frequency components of the output of a wind plant can be followed with very small changes in the nominal thermostat temperature set points.

The webinar took place December 18 between 1pm and 2pm US Eastern Time.