A distributed control design methodology for damping critical modes in power systems

Due to rapid growth of power demand and economical and environmental restrictions for transmission and generation expansion, future power systems will be operating close to their stability limits. Critical modes of the system that are near stability limits can be influenced by unpredictable contingencies and even lead to cascading failures and blackouts. Therefore, maintaining sufficient security margins will be highly dependent on a robust and reliable control infrastructure. In this paper, we proposed a distributed control scheme based on maximum eigenvalue minimization algorithm to improve the damping performance of the mode which is closest to stability limits or a desired performance limit. We also explored the effects of communication structure on controller performance and derived sufficient bounds on distributed feedback gains to guarantee a certain performance. Simulation results on a two-area four-machine test system demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed controller.