Stable Adaptation in Multi-Area Load Frequency Control under Dynamically-Changing Topologies

Multi-area load frequency control (LFC) selects and controls a few generators in each area of the power system in an effort to dampen inter-area frequency oscillations. To effectively dampen such oscillations, it is required to enhance and lower the control activity dynamically during operation, so as to adapt to changing circumstances. Changing circumstances should cover not only parametric uncertainties and unmodelled dynamics (e.g. aggregated area dynamics and bus dynamics), but also the increasing structural flexibility of modern power systems (e.g. protection mechanisms against faults and cyber-attacks, or topology reconfiguration mechanisms for demand response). As formal stability guarantees around such an attractive adaptive multi-area LFC concept are still lacking, this work proposes framework in which adaptation and switching are combined in a provably stable way to handle parametric uncertainty, unmodelled dynamics, and dynamical interconnections of the power system. Stability is studied in the Lyapunov theory sense using the standard structure-preserving modelling approach, and the resulting adaptive multi-area LFC design is validated using an IEEE 39-bus benchmark.