Robust analysis and design of power system load frequency control using the Kharitonov's theorem

This paper presents a robust decentralized proportional-integral (PI) control design as a solution of the load frequency control (LFC) in a multi-area power system. In the proposed methodology, the system robustness margin and transient performance are optimized simultaneously to achieve the optimum PI controller parameters. The Kharitonov's theorem is used to determine the robustness margin, i.e., the maximal uncertainty bounds under which the stable performance of the power system is guaranteed. The integral time square error (ITSE) is applied to quantify the transient performance of the LFC system. In order to tune the PI gains, the control objective function is optimized using the genetic algorithm (GA). To validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, some time based simulations are performed on a three-area power system and the results are then compared with an optimal PI controller. The comparisons show that the proposed control strategy provides the satisfactory robust performance for the wide range of system parameters and load changes in the presence of system nonlinearities and is superior to the other methods. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.