Load frequency control of a realistic power system with multi-source power generation

In this paper, load frequency control (LFC) of a realistic power system with multi-source power generation is presented. The single area power system includes dynamics of thermal with reheat turbine, hydro and gas power plants. Appropriate generation rate constraints (GRCs) are considered for the thermal and hydro plants. In practice, access to all the state variables of a system is not possible and also their measurement is costly and difficult. Usually only a reduced number of state variables or linear combinations thereof, are available. To resolve this difficulty, optimal output feedback controller which uses only the output state variables is proposed. The performances of the proposed controller are compared with the full state feedback controller. The action of this proposed controller provides satisfactory balance between frequency overshoot and transient oscillations with zero steady state error in the multi-source power system environment. The effect of regulation parameter (R) on the frequency deviation response is examined. The sensitivity analysis reveals that the proposed controller is quite robust and optimum controller gains once set for nominal condition need not to be changed for +/- 25% variations in the system parameters and operating load condition from their nominal values. To show the effectiveness of the proposed controller on the actual power system, the LFC of hydro power plants operational in KHOZESTAN (a province in southwest of Iran) has also been presented. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.