A distributed ICT architecture for continuous frequency control

The active participation of consumers in frequency control can mitigate the negative effects of variable renewable generation in a power system. This study aims at designing a distributed information and communication technology architecture for automated demand response. The distributed architecture enables a set of consumers to perform frequency control while being coordinated by an aggregator. Moreover, decision-making algorithms are designed to enable the demand response to participate in frequency control and to provide required reserves. An asynchronous message-oridented middleware is utilized to interface the consumers with the aggregator. In addition, the communication logic between the actors is defined. The distributed architecture is then evaluated through the implementation of a prototype application. Simulated results show that the designed architecture can be utilized for frequency control in automated demand response.