SOME NEW TECHNIQUES FOR THE LOAD FREQUENCY CONTROL OF MULTI-AREA POWER SYSTEMS.

In this dissertation, the problem of multi-area load frequency control in large power systems is investigated. The load frequency control problem is concerned with the minimization of the deviations in the frequencies of the different areas and in the tie line power exchange between these areas, and is a problem of major importance in the satisfactory operation of large power systems. Some new techniques for designing load frequency control systems are presented through the use of concepts from singular perturbation and hierarchical system theory. To provide appropriate vehicles for the design of the new control systems, state variable models for power systems are developed. These models progress from a two-area interconnected power system model to large scale models comprising of N areas. Two centralized state feedback schemes are proposed for the load frequency control by utilizing the separation of the system models into two time scales. In the first scheme, composite controls and reduced order controls are developed to meet the required performance specifications by. The second scheme is obtained by using the theory of variable structure systems where the existence of a sliding regime leads to the design of a single discontinuous state feedback controller that meets the performance requirements. In order to further improve the performance of the closed loop system, a two level hierarchical control scheme is developed. This consists of a set of local controllers that are designed using either the singular perturbation approach or the variable structure system approach as before and a set of global control functions provided by a higher level controller that attempts to coordinate the local controllers. The interaction prediction principle is used as a tool in the design of the global controller. The performance of the presently developed control schemes is examined in detail for the illustrative cases of a two-area and a three-area power system. From this analysis, it is shown that these controllers provide an improved performance compared to the existing control schemes in reducing the frequency and tie line power deviations