Frequency Regulation Services from Connected Residential Devices

This paper demonstrates potential benefits that residential buildings can provide for frequency regulation services in the electric power grid. In a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) implementation, simulated homes and a physical laboratory home are coordinated via a grid aggregator, and it is shown that their aggregate response has the potential to follow the regulation signal on a timescale of seconds. Connected (communication-enabled) devices in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) received demand response (DR) requests from a grid aggregator, and the devices responded to meet the signal while satisfying comfort bounds and physical hardware limitations. Future research will address the issues of cybersecurity threats, participation rates, and reducing equipment wear-and-tear while providing grid services.