Distributed demand side management via smart appliances contributing to frequency control

Nowadays renewable energy has become a trend for energy production but its variable nature has made balancing of demand and supply of the power grid difficult. Dynamic demand management using smart appliances is proposed to serve as a way that part of the regulation burden of balancing demand and supply is shifted to the demand side. However, if all appliances respond to the same frequency deviation, they may start to synchronize, causing large power overshoots and instability of the power grid. Therefore, the idea of implementing randomness into the frequency control of the appliances is proposed and this is what we call a stochastic approach. Simulators are built from scratch to model both scenarios. The effect of synchronization is analyzed and the parameters that can affect the synchronization are investigated. It has been found that the larger the contribution from the smart appliances to the power grid, the easier and faster the synchronization takes place. The stochastic approach solves the problem of synchronization and averages out the large power overshoot. However, the overall performance of stochastic operations is unacceptable due to the randomness in the operation though the mean and variance are as expected. More advanced feedback policies and schemes may be designed to achieve a better performance.