A bilayer interaction strategy for air-conditioning load aggregators considering market-based demand response

With considerable portion of air-conditioning load in total power consumption, air-conditioning load aggregators are authorised to participate in power market by aggregating large amounts of air-conditioning load with or without ice storage system. This paper studies on a bilayer interaction strategy for air-conditioning load aggregators considering market-based demand response, on the basis of a hierarchical deregulated day-ahead market architecture. In the upper layer, load aggregators submit their bids to independent system operator (ISO), after evaluating their load regulation potential. With the aim of minimising load dispatch cost, ISO optimises the dispatch schedule and informs each LA of its bid-winning capacity under a pay-as-bid pricing scheme. In the lower layer, air-conditioning load aggregator adopts a flexible control strategy to optimise the control actions in an effort to maximise its own benefits, as well as keeping indoor temperature within the temperature range in the contract and achieving the desired aggregated demand response capacity allocated by ISO in the upper layer. Thermal dynamic characteristics and corresponding power consumption characteristics of air-conditioning load control strategies are analysed. The resulting model is a mixed-integer non-linear optimisation problem. Finally, simulation verifies the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed strategy.