A. Meyers, A. Pahwa and J.K. Shultis, "Simulation Based Evaluation of Direct Control of Residential Air Conditioners," Electrical Power Systems Research, 19, 37-46 (1990).

Control of residential air conditioners is an important demand-side management activity. The most common approach for controlling appliances is by direct remote control in which a signal is sent using a communication medium to turn off major appliances for a prescribed period of time. In the last few years, local and distributed techniques for load control have emerged. In this paper, a simulation based method is presented for evaluation of two methods for control of residential air conditioners. Remote control is regarded as a relatively mature technology and several field experiments have been conducted using remote control. Therefore, remote control is used as a test case to validate the simulation methodology. Then, local control, which is activated by the outside temperature, is simulated. The device used for this type of control is commonly called a "load leveler." The results (dependence of demand reduction on duty cycle, effects of load control on 5-minute and 1-hour average demands, and 5-minute and 1-hour average temperatures inside the house) obtained with local control are compared with the results obtained with remote control to study similarities and differences in the two strategies.

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