Real-Time Flexibility Market Participation of Thermostatically Controlled Loads

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the feasibility of using the aggregated flexibility of thermostatically controlled loads (TCLs) to provide balancing and congestion management services to system operators through the participation in a real-time flexibility market. To this aim, a TCL aggregation model that employs a bottom-up approach based on physical end-use load models has been developed. A direct load control (DLC) scheme is considered, where the control variable is the thermostat temperature setpoint. This temperature can be manipulated between the upper and lower limits set by end-users, who receive an economic compensation in exchange for the loss of comfort. As output a set of flexibility bids to be sent to the market are obtained. To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed aggregation model and estimate the overall flexibility potential from TCLs, a large-scale case study, based on a future power system in Spain has been considered.