This paper introduces an experimental platform (SYSLAB) for the research on advanced control and power system communication in distributed power systems and one of its components-an intelligent office building (PowerFlexHouse), which is used to investigate the technical potential for active load management. It also presents in detail how to implement a thermal model predictive controller (MPC) for the heaters' power consumption prediction in the PowerFlexHouse. It demonstrates that this MPC strategy can realize load shifting, and using good predictions in MPC-based control, a better matching of demand and supply can be achieved. With this demand side control study, it is expected that MPC strategy for active load management can dramatically raise energy efficiency and improve grid reliability, when there is a high penetration of intermittent energy resources in the power system.

This paper develops a network-constrained transactive control method to integrate distributed energy resources (DERs) into a power distribution system with the purpose of optimizing the operational cost of DERs and power losses of the distribution network, as well as preventing grid problems including power transformer congestion and voltage violations. In this method, a price coordinator is introduced to facilitate the interaction between the distribution system operator and the aggregators in the smart grid. Electric vehicles are used to illustrate the proposed network-constrained transactive control method. Mathematical models are presented to describe the operation of the control method. Finally, simulations are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. To guarantee its optimality, we also checked the numerical results obtained with the network-constrained transactive control method and compared them with the one solved by centralized control, and found a good performance of the proposed control method.

The increasing number of distributed energy resources connected to power systems raises operational challenges for the network operator, such as introducing grid congestion and voltage deviations in the distribution network level, as well as increasing balancing needs at the whole system level. Control and coordination of a large number of distributed energy assets requires innovative approaches. Transactive control has received much attention due to its decentralized decision-making and transparent characteristics. This paper introduces the concept and main features of transactive control, followed by a literature review and demonstration projects that apply to transactive control. Cases are then presented to illustrate the transactive control framework. At the end, discussions and research directions are presented, for applying transactive control to operating power systems, characterized by a high penetration of distributed energy resources.