Authors: Hongun Hui, Yi Ding, Tao Chen, Saifur Rahman and Yonghua Song
Journal: IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, Volume 68, Issue 3
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TIE.2020.2975465
Abstract: The power consumption of inverter air conditioners (IACs) can be regulated flexibly by adjusting the compressor's operating frequency, which has been proven suitable for providing regulation capacities to power systems. Considering the rapid phasing out of traditional generating units, massive IACs create huge alternative regulation potential. However, the impact of IACs on the power system's stability is rarely studied. To address this issue, this article proposes the modeling and control methods of IACs to provide regulation capacities to power systems. On this basis, a novel power system model with the control loop of large-scale IACs is developed, where the communication latency during the control signal transfer process is also considered. Then, the dynamic performance and steady-state errors of the novel power system are evaluated, showing that IACs can quickly participate in and smoothly withdraw from the regulation process. Furthermore, the stabilities and sensitivities of power systems with and without IACs are compared, in order to illustrate that both the stability margin and robustness of the power system can be increased via the control loop of IACs. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed models and methods are verified by numerical studies.