Future trends in power system control

Abstract

To buy time for online computations needed for central coordination and to attain wider-area objectives for optimum operation, one has had to resort to decomposition and, therefore, multilevel hierarchical control schemes. This article looks into the future state of power system operations and control based on a number of assumptions and provides an analysis of the direction that this area might take over the next 25 years. Issues related to development of techniques and requirements for fully coordinated, high-bandwidth, and robust controls for power systems are discussed, and some methodologies are suggested. Proceeding toward this ultimate goal, system-wide automatic voltage control (SAVC), system-wide automatic power control (SAPC), and the integrated system-wide automatic control (SAC) concepts are introduced for coordination of injection (shunt) and routing (series) controllers for both real and reactive power.