Hierarchical control strategy of thermostatically controlled load considering multiple factors

In this article, a distributed hierarchical control strategy of thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs) is proposed, which can effectively utilize TCLs to provide power dispatching service in a microgrid composed of buildings. Firstly, the distributed consensus protocol of TCLs is studied, and the state space of a TCL is established. The optimal control performance is achieved by selecting coupling strength and control gain. Then, the dispatching power of each building is reasonably distributed through pinning control, and consensus coefficient and proportional coefficient are determined according to the heterogeneity of building parameters. Finally, the case studies were conducted to validate the proposed novel distributed hierarchical control scheme, which can provide effective power dispatching services and realize the fair distribution of the dispatching requirements among all TCLs. The proposed strategy also takes into account the multiple factors of each TCL such as heterogeneous parameters, communication burden and user's actual conditions, which improves the feasibility and expansibility of the dispatching process.