As an essential measure to combat global warming, electric vehicles (EVs) have witnessed rapid growth. Flexible EVs can enhance power systems' ability to handle renewable generation uncertainties. How EV flexibility can be utilized in power grid operation has captured great attention. However, the direct control of individual EVs is challenging due to their small capacity and large number. Hence, it is the aggregator that interacts with the grid on behalf of the EVs by characterizing their aggregate flexibility. In this paper, we focus on the aggregate EV power flexibility characterization problem. First, an offline model is built to obtain the lower and upper bounds of the aggregate EV power flexibility region. It ensures that any trajectory within the region is feasible. Then, considering that parameters such as real-time electricity prices and EV arrival/departure times are not known in advance, an online algorithm is developed based on Lyapunov optimization techniques. We provide a theoretical bound for the maximum charging delay under the proposed online algorithm. Furthermore, real-time feedback is designed and integrated into the proposed online algorithm to better unlock EV power flexibility. Comprehensive performance comparisons are carried out to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method.
Increasing integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) within distribution feeders provides unprecedented flexibility at the distribution-transmission interconnection. To exploit this flexibility and to use the capacity potential of aggregate DERs, feasible substation power injection trajectories need to be efficiently characterized. This paper provides an ellipsoidal inner approximation of the set of feasible power injection trajectories at the substation such that for any point in the set, there exists a feasible disaggregation strategy of DERs for any load uncertainty realization. Th…
Aggregators have emerged as crucial tools for the coordination of distributed, controllable loads. To be used effectively, an aggregator must be able to communicate the available flexibility of the loads they control, as known as the aggregate flexibility to a system operator. However, most of existing aggregate flexibility measures often are slow-timescale estimations and much less attention has been paid to real-time coordination between an aggregator and an operator. In this paper, we consider solving an online optimization in a closed-loop system and present a design of real-time aggregate…
In recent years, electric vehicle (EV) charging stations have witnessed a rapid growth. However, effective management of charging stations is challenging due to individual EV owners' privacy concerns, competing interests of different stations, and the coupling distribution network constraints. To cope with this challenge, this paper proposes a two-stage scheme. In the first stage, the aggregate EV power flexibility region is derived by solving an optimization problem. We prove that any trajectory within the obtained region corresponds to at least one feasible EV dispatch strategy. By submittin…
Coordinated aggregation of a large population of thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs) presents a great potential to provide various ancillary services to the grid. One of the key challenges of integrating TCLs into system level operation and control is developing a simple and portable model to accurately capture their aggregate flexibility. In this paper, we propose a geometric approach to model the aggregate flexibility of TCLs. We show that the set of admissible power profiles of an individual TCL is a polytope, and their aggregate flexibility is the Minkowski sum of the individual polyt…
Aggregation of a large number of responsive loads presents great power flexibility for demand response. An effective control and coordination scheme of flexible loads requires an accurate and tractable model that captures their aggregate flexibility. This paper proposes a novel approach to extract the aggregate flexibility of deferrable loads with heterogeneous parameters using polytopic projection approximation. First, an exact characterization of their aggregate flexibility is derived analytically, which in general contains exponentially many inequality constraints with respect to the number…
Aggregators have emerged as crucial tools for the coordination of distributed, controllable loads. However, to be used effectively, aggregators must be able to communicate the available flexibility of the loads they control to the system operator in a manner that is both (i) concise enough to be scalable to aggregators governing hundreds or even thousands of loads and (ii) informative enough to allow the system operator to send control signals to the aggregator that lead to optimization of system-level objectives, such as cost minimization, and do not violate private constraints of the loads, …
The increasing penetration of renewable generation requires new tools to achieve a high matching between demand and renewable generation at building and community levels. Large commercial and public buildings with parking lots have a considerable potential to provide energy flexibility by controlling the charging of Electric Vehicles (EVs) and injecting part of the stored energy into the building, using Building-to-Vehicle (B2V) and Vehicle-to-Building (V2B) systems. However, EVs and buildings do not often belong to the same entity and in Portugal the existing regulation does not allow financi…
Increasing integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) within distribution feeders provides unprecedented flexibility at the distribution-transmission interconnection. With the new FERC 2222 order, DER aggregations are allowed to participate in energy market. To enable market participation, these virtual power plants need to provide their generation cost curves. This paper proposes efficient optimization formulations and solution approaches for the characterization of hourly as well as multi-time-step generation cost curves for a distribution system with high penetration of DERs. Networ…
In a power grid, the electricity supply and demand must be balanced at all times to maintain the system's frequency. In practice, the grid operator achieves this balance by procuring frequency reserves in an ahead-of-time market setting. During runtime, these reserves are then dispatched whenever there is an imbalance in the grid. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in engaging electricity consumers, such as plug-in electric vehicles or buildings, to offer such frequency reserves by exploiting their flexibility in power consumption. In this work, we focus on an aggregation of build…
We use online convex optimization (OCO) for setpoint tracking with uncertain, flexible loads. We consider full feedback from the loads, bandit feedback, and two intermediate types of feedback: partial bandit where a subset of the loads are individually observed and the rest are observed in aggregate, and Bernoulli feedback where in each round the aggregator receives either full or bandit feedback according to a known probability. We give sublinear regret bounds in all cases. We numerically evaluate our algorithms on examples with thermostatically controlled loads and electric vehicles.
This paper addresses the modeling and control of heterogeneous populations of thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs) operated by model predictive control (MPC) schemes at level of each TCL. It is shown that the dynamics of such TCLs populations can be described by a pair of Fokker-Planck equations coupled via the actions in the domain. The technique of input-output feedback linearization is used in the design of aggregate power control, which leads to a nonlinear system in closed loop. Well-posedness analysis is carried out to validate the developed control scheme. The closed-loop stability …
High integration of intermittent renewable energy sources (RES), in particular wind power, has created complexities in power system operations. On the other hand, large fleets of Electric Vehicles (EVs) are expected to have great impact on electricity consumption, and uncoordinated charging process will add load uncertainty and further complicate the grid scheduling. In this paper, we propose a smart charging approach that uses the flexibility of EV owners to absorb the fluctuations in the output of RES in a vehicle-to-grid (V2G) setup. We propose an optimal scheduling algorithm for charge/dis…
