Autonomous Demand Response for frequency regulation is real, and being pursued as a way to deal with the intermittency of renewables and the resulting impact on grid supply. Here are some references:
Thanks for the excellent references, the PNNL report was a very interesting read.
> "Autonomous Demand Response for frequency regulation is real..."
I wasn't saying that ADR wasn't "real," just that it's not something we're currently doing for frequency control in actual practice...and of course that might change as engineers continue researching and pushing the field further. It definitely looks like ADR solutions are on the horizon though.
General Topic: http://www.pnnl.gov/main/publications/external/technical_rep... http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196890416...
HVAC Demand/Response: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7407597/?reload=true
Aluminum Smelter Demand Response: http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1836&c...