Hierarchical bi-level load frequency control for multi-area interconnected power systems

To overcome the shortcomings of proportional-integral (PI) control, a linear quadratic regulator (LQR) is proposed in this study, to determine the set points of the PI controllers in a two-level hierarchical manner. The application of the proposed scheme is studied on load frequency control (LFC) of a power system with multiple control areas (CAs). At the lower control level, a discrete PI controllers are used to regulate the frequency and tie-line powers of each of the CAs. To achieve an improved closed loop performance, the local PI controllers are optimally tuned using moth flame optimization (MFO) algorithm by minimizing the Integral Square Error (ISE) of the state errors with respect to local information and interactions with neighboring CAs. While at the upper control layer, an optimized finite-horizon LQR is applied as a guide to establish the optimal set-points of the lower level PI controllers. Since only few of the state variables can be accessed, Kalman filter (KF) is applied as an observer for the estimation of the remaining states. The efficacy of the proposed scheme is verified by implementing it on a three-CA system perturbed with a step and random net disturbances formed by combining the fluctuations in the output power of DFIG-based wind turbine generator and random load demand. From the simulation results, it is established that the proposed LQR-PI supervisory scheme has outperformed the conventional PI control scheme in optimality and stability.