Fast Frequency Regulation Support by LED Street Lighting Control

The replacement of conventional power plants with Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) is reducing total system inertia. As a consequence, frequency deviations induced from power supply-demand imbalances increase with DERs penetrations. In the future years, grid services such as frequency regulation support will be provided by means of distributed generators, prosumers and controllable loads, in order to ensure the power system reliability. LED lamps of road lighting systems represent an interesting case of controllable loads since they are widespread in smart cities and can be regulated by means of local or remote control signals. This paper investigates the possibility to regulate the power consumption of lighting street systems to provide frequency support. Power Hardware-in-the-Loop (PHIL) simulations with an actual LED street lamp have been carried out in order to validate the proposed control strategy. Test results and final conclusions are provided.