  Smart buildings are the need of the day with increasing demand-supply ratios
and deficiency to generate considerably. In any modern non-industrial
infrastructure, these demands mainly comprise of thermostatically controlled
loads (TCLs), which can be manoeuvred. TCL loads like air-conditioner, heater,
refrigerator, are ubiquitous, and their operating times can be controlled to
achieve desired aggregate power. This power aggregation, in turn, helps achieve
load management targets and thereby serve as ancillary service (AS) to the
power grid. In this work, a distributed averaging protocol is used to achieve
the desired power aggregate set by the utility using steady-state
desynchronization. The results are verified using a computer program for a
homogeneous and heterogeneous population of TCLs. Further, load following
scenario has been implemented using the utility as a reference. Apart from
providing a significant AS to the power grid, the proposed idea also helps
reduce the amplitude of power system oscillations imparted by the TCLs.
Hardware-based results are obtained to verify its implementation feasibility in
real-time. Additionally, we extend this idea to data-driven paradigm and
provide comparisons therein.
