Synthetic Cloud-Based Regulation Reserve Distribution Management (SECURED)

The past decade has seen advancements in renewable energy technology, making even smaller solar and wind installations at residential level an economically viable option. Hence, large amounts of distributed energy sources (DERs) with high penetration of renewables will form a key component of an urban energy grid. This not only reduces the inertia of the system but also injects large unpredictable disturbances into the grid. Furthermore, the end user devices are getting smarter, resulting in added uncertainty in demand. The intermittent generation from renewables and changing consumption patterns are required to be compensated through dispatchable conventional generation sources in order to prevent frequency excursions caused due to generation demand mismatch. However, it is envisioned that large amounts of DERs and adjustable loads causing high frequency disturbances can also be used to the advantage at system level. These collectively provide reserves and balancing services to the grid for frequency regulation, specifically in the presence of high renewable energy integration. Today’s demand response programs fail owing to complexity involved in large scale coordinated control of a vast number of DERs at finer time resolution. Proper market strategies enabling participation of endusers in decision making is what is needed to make provision of robust synthetic reserves a commercially feasible option.