1
Application of PSO and Fuzzy Logic for
Underfrequency Load Shedding
M. K. Gray, Student Member, IEEE, and W. G. Morsi, Member, IEEE
Abstract— Islanded operation of power systems with a
shortage of generation to meet the local demand may experience
a dip in frequency which could potentially damage the system
equipment unless proper action is taken to shed loads in a timely
manner. Recent research has shown that the uncertainty
associated with estimating the amount of load to be shed can be
better handled by fuzzy systems; however, there is not much
work on determining the optimal settings of the fuzzy system
parameters. This paper presents the application of Particle
Swarm Optimization (PSO) in optimization of a fuzzy system
used in underfrequency load shedding (UFLS).
Index Terms—Load shedding, island power system, fuzzy
systems, particle swarm optimization.
I. INTRODUCTION
L arge power system disturbances can potentially lead to
islanding operations with localized generation and
demand. Due to the unpredictable nature of disturbances, the
power mismatch between the generation and demand may not
be known beforehand. In the event that demand greatly
exceeds generation within the islanded system, the frequency
of the system will drop to critical levels (a phenomenon
commonly known as underfrequency) which may be
damaging to rotating machines and other load equipment
within the island. One of the most common techniques in
practice to address underfrequency is through fixed stage load
shedding [1], in which groups of loads are assigned priorities
corresponding with frequency thresholds, such that load
groups are shed when the system frequency drops below their
respective limits. While this scheme is simple, the amount of
load to be shed may be more than required in many situations;
resulting in more customers being affected, increased cost for
energy not supplied (ENS), and reduced system reliability.
Anderson et al. [2] derived a mathematical model of the
islanded system and used it to calculate the amount of load to
be shed. Despite the reduced amount of overshed load in
comparison to the fixed stage system, the utilization of these
models [2] and [3] in practice requires intensive system
studies and must be set to adhere to one system model. Given
the uncertainties of islanded power system operation, recent
studies [4] and [5] suggest that fuzzy systems are one of the
M.K. Gray and W.G. Morsi are with the Department of Electrical
Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of
Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), Oshawa, Ontario, Canada L1H7K4
(e-mail: Matt.Gray@uoit.ca; walidmorsi.ibrahim@uoit.ca).
2013 IEEE Electrical Power & Energy Conferenc (EPEC)
978-1-4799-0106-7/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE
most effective decision making tools to address uncertainties
in comparison to alternatives such as neural networks. In the
literature, most of the work done introducing fuzzy systems to
solve the problem of estimating the amount of load shedding
[4]-[6] relies on the need of an expert in designing its
controlling parameters, a technique which lacks strict backing
for determining optimality of the controller. The lack of
optimality in the fuzzy system parameter set design represents
a clear gap that is filled in this research work through the
application of a swarm optimizer. Particle Swarm
Optimization (PSO) is a stochastic optimization technique
originally proposed by Kennedy and Eberhart in 1995 [7]. The
PSO algorithm scans the search space using positions and
velocities of the particles that resembles the movement of
flocks of birds and schools of fish. Applying PSO aims to
optimize fuzzy system variables and hence finding the optimal
load shedding scheme.
II. FUZZY SYSTEMS DESIGN
The design of a fuzzy system can be broken down into three
different components: 1) input, 2) processing, and 3) output.
The parameters most indicative of an underfrequency
condition are the system frequency and rate of change of
frequency [3] both of which will be used as inputs to the fuzzy
system. During input fuzzification stage, the input frequency
and rate of change of frequency are expressed in fuzzy terms
using linguistic variables and membership functions. Usually,
there is a tradeoff between complexity and robustness of the
fuzzy system when choosing the number of linguistic
variables and the types of membership functions. The work in
this research utilizes five linguistic variables for each input
(consisting of critical, very low, low, medium, and high terms)
resulting in twenty five fuzzy rules; as a means of achieving
reasonable robustness over varying situations as well as a
simple parameter set for evaluation.
Following the number of membership functions,
preliminary simulations by the authors comparing common
membership functions (Gaussian and triangular) have shown
that Gaussian functions outperform triangular functions by
providing more robust results while requiring less parameters
to be handled by the optimizer. The processing component of
a fuzzy system consists of an inference system and a
knowledge base. To maintain simplicity, this work utilizes the
standard Mamdani inference system, using min/max functions
as the AND/OR operators, and the fuzzy rule set consists of
twenty five rules to consider every combination of fuzzy input
variables.
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Finally, in determining the output membership function, it fitness of the potential controller for the optimizer as depicted
is determined that output linguistic variables are best in Fig. 1.
represented with Gaussian membership functions
mathematically represented as:

2
2σ 2
f ( x, μ , σ ) = e −( x − c ) (1)

where parameters μ and σ represent the standard deviation

and mean respectively. Following the choice of five linguistic
variables to represent an input, the output also contains five
linguistic variables, namely very large (VL), large (L),
medium (M), small (S) and very small (S). The complete Fig. 1 Block diagram of the proposed PSO-fuzzy underfrequency load
listing of the fuzzy knowledge base and listing is tabulated in shedding.
Table I. As mentioned prior, the parameters of each linguistic
variable are set optimally through the results of PSO; the In evaluating the performance of the PSO optimizer to
technique of which is as described in the following section. determine the optimal settings of the fuzzy system parameters
in the proposed underfrequency load shedding approach; the
TABLE I FUZZY RULES REPRESENTING THE KNOWLEDGE BASE FOR THE following fitness and penalty scheme was implemented:
PROPOSED PSO-FUZZY UNDERFREQUENCY LOAD SHEDDING

Frequency (f) 1) Parameters from the optimizer are used to construct the
Very fuzzy system that will undergo testing.
Critical Low Medium High 2) The developed fuzzy system in step 1 is tested on the power
Low
Critical VL VL VL L M system of concern under different load mismatch conditions.
Rate of 3) The optimizer records the maximum amount of load to be
Very
change of
Low
VL VL L M S shed as well as the minimum and maximum frequencies
frequency reached for each simulation.
(df/dt) Low VL L M S VS
4) Particles fitness is set to be the sum of the maximum loads
Medium L M S VS VS shed under each simulation
High M S VS VS VS 5) Frequencies above or below the upper and lower frequency
thresholds result in a penalty proportional to the amount
exceeded.
III. PARTICLE SWARM OPTIMIZATION 6) The optimizer will adjust the parameters of the fuzzy
The classical form of PSO algorithm has been applied and system to minimize the fitness function described.
the equations of which have been reiterated below [7]:
vi (t ) = vi (t − 1) + ρ1C1 × ( ρ i − xi (t − 1)) Fig. 2 shows the flowchart of parameter optimization for the
proposed PSO-fuzzy underfrequency load shedding approach.
+ ρ 2C2 × ( ρ g − xi (t − 1)) (2)
xi (t ) = xi (t − 1) + vi (t ) (3) IV. SIMULATION AND TEST RESULTS
where: In this section, a standalone power system presented in [2]
vi : Velocity of particle at iteration t is used to assess the performance of the proposed PSO-fuzzy-
based underfrequency load shedding. Fig. 3 shows the block
xi : Position of particle at iteration t diagram of the standalone system with gain Km, damping
ρ1, ρ2: Random number between 0 and 1 factor D, inertia constant H, average reheat time constant TR,
C1 , C2 : Learning factors and pressure power fraction of the reheat turbine FH. The
values of these parameters are set in compliance with common
ρ i : Best position ever visited by the particle system designs according to [2].
ρ g : Best position ever visited by the swarm The performance of the proposed PSO-based
underfrequency load shedding is compared to two state-of-the
art underfrequency load shedding approaches, namely fixed
Learning factors C1 and C2 of PSO algorithm have been stage underfrequency load shedding (FS-UFLS) and the
set to the values of 2.0 each as recommended in [7] and [8]. adaptive load shedding schemes [2] while the results are
The swarm size was determined to be five to balance presented in Tables II, III and IV. Inspection of Figs. 4 and 5
performance with computational time, with 250 iterations to and the results presented in Table IV reveal that the fixed
stabilize the results; both observations as seen in the authors’ stage algorithm is not capable of shedding appropriate loads to
prior tests. In optimizing the fuzzy system parameters, the maintain the frequency in cases with large power changes,
optimizer is set to adjust the membership functions for all giving justification to the development of the adaptive
linguistic variables (VL,L,M,S,VS), after which the fuzzy algorithm. The adaptive algorithm however, can be improved
system will undergo a series of simulations to evaluate the to reduce the unnecessary amount of load shed as seen in the
results of the proposed PSO-fuzzy UFLS which dominate the
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adaptive maximum load shed for all situations. From the Pd + Pa + Δω

results of Table IV, the proposed PSO-fuzzy UFLS shows to 1 2 Hs
be capable of maintaining the frequency above the constrained − −
limit for all levels of power changes with reduced load to shed Pm
compared to the adaptive approach.
D

Start

Initialize swarm K m (1 + FH TR s ) R (1 + TR s )

Start with first particle Fig. 3 Block diagram of standalone system used in this study

TABLE II: FIXED STAGE UFLS SCHEME

Set Fuzzy parameter
and simulate Amount of load
Stage Frequency (Hz) Delay (seconds)
to be shed (pu)

Evaluate fitness 1 59.5 0.0625 0.1

2 59.2 0.0625 0.1
Next
iteration 3 58.9 0.0625 0.1

Frequency 4 58.6 0.0625 0.1

exceeds
upper/lower
Yes
thresholds?
TABLE III: ADAPTIVE UFLS SCHEME
Load
next Penalize Amount of load
particle No fitness Stage Frequency (Hz) Delay (seconds)
to be shed (pu)
1 59.5 0.317 0.1
No 2 59.2 0.1 0.1
All
particles
3 58.9 0.1 0.1
done?
4 58.6 0.1 0.1
5 58.3 0.05 0.1
Yes

Update V, P, Gbest, Pbest

Termination No
criteria
satisfied

Yes

End

Fig. 2 Flowchart of the PSO algorithm for fuzzy parameter selection.

Fig. 4 System frequency response of the three UFLS methods for 1 pu change
in power demand.
 4

VI. REFERENCES
[1] D. Xu and A. A. Girgis, "Optimal load shedding strategy in
power systems with distributed generation," in Proc. Of the
IEEE Power Engineering Society Winter Meeting, vol. 2, 2001
pp.788-793.
[2] P.M. Anderson and M. Mirheydar, "An adaptive method for
setting underfrequency load shedding relays”, IEEE Trans.
Power Systems, vol. 7, no. 2, pp.647-655, May 1992.
[3] S.J. Huang and C.C Huang, “An adaptive load shedding method
with time-based design for isolated power systems”, Intr’l
Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems, vol. 22, no. 1,
pp. 51-58, Jan. 2000.
[4] J.A. Laghari, A.B. Halim, M. Karimi, and A. Shahriari, “An
Intelligent Under Frequency Load Shedding Scheme for
Islanded Distribution Network” in Proc. Of the IEEE Intr’l
Conf. on Power Engineering and Optimization (PEDCO),
Melaka, Malysia, June 2012, pp. 40-50.
Fig. 5 System frequency response of the three UFLS methods for 0.75 pu [5] K. Pandiarajan, C.K. Babulal, "Overload alleviation in electric
change in power demand power system using fuzzy logic," in Proc. Intr’l Conf.
Computer, Communication and Electrical Technology
TABLE IV: COMPARISON OF THE THREE METHODS FOR UFLS (ICCCET), March 2011, pp.417-423.
[6] S.K. Tso, T.X. Zhu, Q.Y. Zeng, and K.L. Lo, "Evaluation of
Change in power Proposed PSO- load shedding to prevent dynamic voltage instability based on
FS-UFLS Adaptive
demand (pu) Fuzzy UFLS extended fuzzy reasoning," IEE Generation, Transmission and
Minimum Distribution, vol. 144, no. 2, pp.81-86, Mar. 1997.
frequency 53.83 57.19 57.01 [7] J. Kennedy and R. Eberhart, “Particle Swarm Optimization”, in
(Hz) Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Neural Networks, pp. 1942-1948, Nov./
1.00
Maximum
Dec.1995.
amount of 0.25 0.717 0.6519
load shed (pu) [8] E. Talbi, Metaheuristics: From Design to Implementation, John
Minimum Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey, 2009.
frequency 55.87 58.52 57.97
(Hz) VII. BIOGRAPHIES
0.75
Maximum
amount of 0.25 0.717 0.5398
load shed (pu) Matt K. Gray (S’12) was born in Ajax Ontario in 1989. He received the
B.Eng from the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT),
Minimum
Oshawa, ON, Canada, in 2012. He is currently pursuing his M.ASc in
frequency 57.89 59.06 58.19
Electrical and Computer Engineering at UOIT. His research interests include
(Hz)
0.50 energy automation, optimization, smart grid, and artificial intelligence
Maximum applications in power systems. Mr. Gray is registered as an Engineer in
amount of 0.25 0.417 0.3131 Training with the Association of Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO)
load shed (pu)
Minimum
frequency 58.92 59.33 58.62 Walid G. Morsi (S’07 --- M’09) was born in Ismailia, Egypt in 1975. He
(Hz) received the B.Sc. (Eng.) and M.Sc. degrees from Suez Canal University,
0.25
Maximum Port-Said, Egypt, in 1998 and 2002, respectively. In 2009, he received the
amount of 0.125 0.317 0.1078 Ph.D. degree from Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada, where he was
load shed (pu) a Killam memorial pre-doctoral scholar then he worked as an Assistant
Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at
University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada. Currently he is
V. CONCLUSION working as Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied
In this paper, a fuzzy-based underfrequency load shedding Science at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT), Oshawa,
ON, Canada. His research interests include power quality, renewable energy
approach is presented. The fuzzy system parameters are sources, smart grid, signal processing and artificial intelligence applications in
optimally set using particle swarm optimization (PSO). The power systems. Dr. Morsi is a registered professional engineer of Association
results have shown that the fixed stage underfrequency load of Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO).
shedding is unable to maintain the system frequency
especially for large power mismatch; on the other hand, the
adaptive underfrequency scheme overcomes this limitation but
it may result into shedding more loads than necessary and
hence affecting more customers. The results have also
revealed that the proposed PSO-Fuzzy based underfrequency
load shedding is able to determine the minimum amount of
load to be shed while maintaining the system frequency for all
power mismatch and therefore shows significant improvement
in robustness and performance over the fixed stage and
adaptive methods.