Homeostatic Utility Control

Distribution Automation and Control (DAC) systems have potentially major effects on costs, social impacts, and even on the nature of the power system itself, especially as dispersed storage, generation, and customer interaction become more prevalent. However, at the present time, it is not clear which particular modes of control will best exploit the capabilities of DAC. Homeostatic Utility Control is an overall concept which tries to maintain an internal equilibrium between supply and demand. Equilibrating forces are obtained over longer time scales (5 minutes and up) by economic principles through an Energy Marketplace using time-varying spot prices. Faster supply-demand balancing is obtained by employing "governor-type" action on certain types of loads using a Frequency Adaptive Power Energy Rescheduler (FAPER) to assist or even replace conventional turbine-governed systems and spinning reserve. Conventional metering is replaced by a Marketing Interface to Customer (MIC) which, in addition to measuring power usage, multiplies that usage by posted price and records total cost. Customers retain the freedom to select their consumption patterns. Homeostatic control is a new, untried concept. It is discussed in this paper because its great potential makes it a vehicle for interesting discussions of where the future may actually evolve.