Frequency-based load control in power systems

Abstract

Maintaining demand-supply balance and regulating frequency are key issues in power system control. Conventional approaches focus on adjusting the generation so that it follows the load. However, relying on solely regulating generation is inefficient, especially for power systems where contingencies like sudden loss in generation or sudden change in load frequently occur and the proportion of intermittent renewable power is increasing. We present a frequency-based load control scheme for demand-supply balancing and frequency regulation. We formulate a load control optimization problem which aims to balance the change in load with the change in supply while minimizing the overall end-use disutility. By studying the power system model that characterizes the frequency response to real power imbalance between demand and supply, we design decentralized synchronous and asynchronous algorithms which take advantage of local frequency measurements to solve the load control problem. Case studies show that the proposed load control scheme is capable of relatively quickly balancing the power and restoring the frequency under generation-loss like contingencies or renewable power penetration. Case studies also show that the proposed scheme still works well when users have the knowledge of a simplified system model instead of an accurate one.

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