Integrating direct load control with interruptible load management to provide instantaneous reserves for ancillary services

This paper presents a novel adaptive control strategy for integrating direct load control (DLC) with interruptible load management (ILM) to provide instantaneous reserves for ancillary services in deregulated power systems. Fuzzy dynamic programming is used to satisfy customers' requirements and yields a near optimal pre-scheduling of the DLC. Then, the energy payback associated with the DLC is further eliminated by the adaptive control strategy, which exploits interruptible loads to modify the DLC schedule in real-time. Through the developed adaptive control strategy, the influences of the load uncertainties and forecasting errors on the pre-scheduling of the DLC can also be excluded. The proposed algorithm was practically tested on the Taiwan power (Taipower) 38-unit system with 20 air-conditioner loads and 15 interruptible loads. The outcomes reveal that an exact amount of instantaneous reserves can be successfully acquired, and the results are robust against dynamic disturbances of the power system.