Hardware-in-the-Loop and Field Demonstration Towards Voltage Regulation in Distribution System Considering Adjustable Inverter Air Conditioners

The voltage quality of distribution systems is facing challenges due to the increasing intermittency and uncertainty of renewable energy generation. In contrast to the traditional regulation method, the demand response through regulating demand-side resources' power consumption is gaining greater attention. Inverter air conditioners (IACs) have a high percentage in the demand-side resources and have huge regulation potential for distribution system voltage regulation services. However, considering the large scale and complexity of the distribution system, most previous studies on IACs' voltage regulation are verified only by simulation tools, e.g., Simulink and Pandapower. This study demonstrates a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) platform for voltage regulation by realistic IACs with a real time digital simulator. The voltage sensitivity matrix evaluates the number of IACs participating in the voltage regulation. A modified IEEE 33-node distribution system with fluctuating photovoltaic generation is used to validate the proposed method. The experiment results show that the proposed method effectively maintains voltage stability in the distribution system.