1136
3, AUGUST 2008
Design of Wide-Area Damping Controllers for
Interarea Oscillations
Yang Zhang, Student Member, IEEE, and Anjan Bose, Fellow, IEEE
Abstract—This paper develops a systematic procedure of de-
signing a centralized damping control system for power grid
interarea oscillations putting emphasis on the signal selection
and control system structure assignment. Geometric measures of
controllability/observability are used to select the most effective
stabilizing signals and control locations. Line power flows and
currents are found to be the most effective input signals. The syn-
thesis of the controller is defined as a problem of mixed 2
output-feedback control with regional pole placement and is
resolved by the linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach. A tuning
process and nonlinear simulations are then used to modify the
controller parameters to ensure the performance and robustness
of the controller designed with linear techniques. The design
process is tested on the New England 39-bus ten-machine system.
Index Terms—Damping controller, interarea oscillations, robust
control, wide-area control, wide-area measurements.
I. INTRODUCTION
ARGE power systems typically exhibit multiple domi-
L nant interarea swing modes on the order of 0.1–1.0 Hz.
This type of oscillations limits the amount of power transfer on
the tie-lines between the regions containing coherent generator
groups. Today, oscillatory stability control has become more im-
portant because these low-frequency interarea oscillations are
often poorly damped with the increase of energy interchanges
across the power grids.
The traditional approach to damp out interarea oscillations
is to install power system stabilizers (PSS) that provide supple-
mentary control action through the generator excitation systems.
In recent years, supplementary modulation controllers (SMC)
are added to FACTS devices to damp the interarea oscillations.
These controllers usually use local inputs and cannot always be
effective in easing the problem due to two main shortcomings.
First, based on a linearization of the system model in a nom-
inal operating point, conventional local controllers designed by
the classical control techniques have their validity restricted to
a neighborhood of this point. But power systems constantly
experience changes in operating conditions due to variations
in generation and load patterns and changes in transmission
networks. In addition, some uncertainty is introduced into the
power system model due to inaccurate approximation of the
Manuscript received March 14, 2007; revised July 14, 2007. This work was
supported in part through the Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology
Solutions (CERTS), funded by the Assistant Secretary of Energy Efficiency
and Renewable Energy, Office of Distributed Energy and Electricity Reliability,
Transmission Reliability Program of the U.S. Department of Energy under In-
teragency Agreement No. DE-AI-99EE35075 with the NSF and in part through
PSerc, an NSF I/UCRC. Paper no. TPWRS-00171-2007.
The authors are with the Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99163
USA (e-mail: yzhang1@eecs.wsu.edu; bose@wsu.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPWRS.2008.926718
0885-8950/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE
Authorized licensed use limited to: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DELHI. Downloaded on August 05,2010 at 17:40:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 23, NO.
power system parameters, neglected high frequency dynamics
and invalid assumptions made in the modeling process. Second,
local controllers lack global observation of interarea modes. It
has been proved that under certain operating conditions an inter-
area mode may be controllable from one area and be observable
from another [1]. In such cases, local controllers are not effec-
tive for the damping of that mode.
The recently developed robust control theory and wide-area
control system technologies offer a great potential to overcome
the shortcomings of conventional local controllers. Robust
control techniques have been applied to design controllers that
formally guarantee the system stability with an acceptable
performance for a wide range of operating conditions [2]–[4].
With the technology of phasor measurement units (PMU), syn-
chronized dynamic data of power systems can be transferred
across the whole power system [5], [6]. The availability of
wide-area measurements enables the real time detection and
control of small signal instability in large scale power systems
[7]. Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) developed a
wide-area control system (WACS) for the transient stability
and voltage support of their power system [30]. For some
specific grid structures and operating conditions, wide-area
control is more efficient than local control in preventing loss
of synchronism. References [8] and [9] show that for a study
system resembling the Hydro-Québec grid, local controls need
from four to 20 times larger gain than wide-area control to
achieve a similar damping effect.
Many researchers achieved good results by applying
wide-area measurements and robust control techniques to the
design of wide-area control system for power system oscilla-
tions damping. One promising approach is to design wide-area
measurements based controllers that provide control actions
through generator excitation systems supplemental to the ac-
tion of local PSSs. In [10], a remote feedback controller (RFC)
design methodology using PMU measurements is described.
Reference [11] proposes a design of supervisor PSS (SPSS)
that exchanges information with local PSSs to improve power
systems oscillatory stability. Reference [12] proposes a decen-
tralized/hierarchical structure for a wide-area control system.
Wide-area signals based PSSs are used to provide damping
additional to the local ones.
In this paper we develop a systematic design procedure of
wide-area damping control systems by combining stabilizing
signal selection and LMI based robust control design together,
with particular attention to several issues. One such issue is the
selection of input stabilizing signals. The number of input sig-
nals and the effect of different types of signals on control perfor-
mance are important design considerations. For example, gen-
erator speed deviations have often been used as controller in-
 ZHANG AND BOSE: DESIGN OF WIDE-AREA DAMPING CONTROLLERS FOR INTERAREA OSCILLATIONS
puts but these are not easily obtained and need to be synchro-
nized, which often increases time delays. Our results show that
a comparison of different inputs can lead to a smaller number
of simpler inputs that provide the same control performance.
The method of geometric measures of controllability and ob-
servability introduced by Hamdan [13] is used to select the most
effective stabilizing signals and control locations.
In the literature, while single objective synthesis techniques
like optimization are often used for robust controller de-
sign [2]–[4], [11], [15], multiobjective synthesis is seldom ap-
plied in the design of wide-area damping controllers for power
system oscillations. Multiobjective synthesis has several advan-
tages over single objective synthesis as discussed in part IV. The
design method proposed in this paper for a wide-area damping
controller (WADC) to provide damping signals simultaneously
to automatic voltage regulators (AVRs) of several selected gen-
erators in addition to their local PSS control signals, is a multi-
objective synthesis, a mix of time- and frequency- domain spec-
ifications ranging from and performance to regional
pole placement constraints.
The resulting WADC controller is a robust multiple-input-
multiple-output (MIMO) controller. Because linear techniques
are used in designing this controller, it should be further tuned
and its performance and robustness should be tested on a
test-bed that represents the realistic power system with all its
nonlinearities, preferably the same type of simulation programs
that are used to study the dynamics of power systems. In our
design process, nonlinear simulations are conducted using the
Transient Security Assessment Tool (TSAT) [26] to test the
efficacy of the designed WADC, which is modeled as a TSAT
User-Defined Model (UDM).
This paper is structured as follows: Section II presents the
architecture of the proposed wide-area damping control system;
Section III presents techniques used in the selection of stabi-
lizing signals and location of control devices; Section IV briefly
discusses the mixed output feedback control with
regional pole placements in the LMI framework; Section V
describes the general procedure of the design of wide-area
damping controller; Section VI gives one numerical example
and Section VII presents the conclusions.
II. WIDE-AREA DAMPING CONTROLLER STRUCTURE
The decentralized structure and the centralized structure are
the most often used approaches for the design of damping con-
troller. Based on local measurements, the first approach does not
need additional telecommunication equipment. But, decentral-
ized/local control alone may not be enough to meet the damping
needs of the future electrical networks, which are highly inter-
connected and stressed [9]. In contrast, centralized wide-area
damping control provides more efficient solutions due to the
availability of large amount of system wide dynamic data and
better observation of interarea modes. Wide-area controls in-
clude any control that requires some communication link to ei-
ther gather the input or to send out the control signal [14]. It
is found that if remote signals are applied to the controller, the
system dynamic performance can be enhanced with respect to
interarea oscillations [1], [10]. Even though additional telecom-
munication equipment is needed for the realization of such a
Authorized licensed use limited to: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DELHI. Downloaded on August 05,2010 at 17:40:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1137
Fig. 1. General structure of wide-area damping control system.
centralized wide-area damping control system, it still turns out
to be more cost-effective than installing new control devices.
In most power systems, local oscillation modes are often well
damped due to the installation of local PSSs, while interarea
modes are often lightly damped because the control inputs used
by those PSSs are local signals and often lack good observa-
tion of some significant interarea modes. This suggests that a
wide-area controller using wide-area measurements as its inputs
to create control signals supplement to local PSSs may help to
damp interarea oscillations out. A centralized controller struc-
ture is thus proposed and shown in Fig. 1.
In the proposed wide-area damping control system, selected
stabilizing signals are measured by PMUs and sent to the con-
troller through dedicated communication links. The wide-area
damping controller calculates modulation signals and sends
them to the selected generator exciters.
Normally, all the local PSSs are still conventional controllers
designed by classical methods. In this design, they are modeled
in the open loop state-space representation, on which the design
of the WADC is based. The whole damping system includes
two levels. The first level is fully decentralized and consists of
conventional PSSs. The second level is centralized and provides
supplemental damping actions in addition to the first level for
the lightly damped interarea oscillations.
III. SELECTION OF MEASUREMENTS AND CONTROL LOCATIONS
Wide-area control is desirable for interarea oscillation
damping mainly because it provides better observability and
controllability and thus better damping effects of those modes.
This benefit partly comes from the availability of system-wide
dynamic information contained in remote stabilizing signals.
In the selection of stabilizing signals and control locations, it
is desirable to use as few measurements and control devices as
possible to achieve satisfactory damping effects. This effort is
worthwhile from an economic viewpoint because less measure-
ment and control points mean less cost for communication links
and/or controllers. Furthermore, less control loops are involved,
 1138 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 23, NO. 3, AUGUST 2008

so that the interaction between loops can be reduced. According

to the findings of this research, only a few measurements and
control points are needed to achieve acceptable damping for
troublesome interarea modes under the proposed centralized
network configurations.
The most often used method to select locations and stabilizing
signals for PSSs and FACTS devices is controllability/observ-
ability analysis [16], [17]. This method is derived from modal
control theory of linear time-invariant system and calculates
residue-based measures of modal controllability/observability.
The limit of residue-based measures is that they are only valid
for the signals of the same type. This approach suffers a scaling
problem when comparing the strength of signals of a widely
differing physical significance, such as power flow in a tie-line
(MW), bus frequency (Hz), shaft speed (rad/s), and angle shift
(deg.) [12]. To overcome this shortcoming, the method used in
[27], geometric measures of modal controllability/observability,
is also used in this research to evaluate the comparative strength
of a signal or the performance of a controller with respect to a
given mode.
After linearization around a given operating condition and
elimination of algebraic variables, the state-space model of the
studied system can be written as
(1)
(2)
where is the state vector and the measured output
vector; is the input vector whose entries are control
signals sent out by WADC; , and
are state, input and output matrices, respectively.
Suppose matrix has distinct eigenvalues
and the corresponding matrices of right and left
eigenvectors, respectively, and . The geometric measures of
controllability and observability associated
with the mode are
(3)
(4)
Fig. 2. Multiobjective damping controller synthesis configuration.
IV. MIXED OUTPUT-FEEDBACK CONTROL WITH
REGIONAL POLE PLACEMENTS VIA LMI OPTIMIZATION
Robust control techniques were introduced into power system
damping controller design in the last decade to handle mod-
eling errors and uncertainties. The most often used approach
is the single objective synthesis, in which all control require-
ments are weighted and formulated in a single objective. It is
well known that each robust method is mainly useful to capture
a set of special specifications [20]. control maintains good
robust performance in presence of model uncertainties. But it
is mainly concerned with frequency-domain performance and
does not guarantee good transient behaviors for the closed-loop
system. control gives more suitable performance on system
transient behavior and is often applied to meet performance
specifications and impulsive disturbance rejection while guar-
anteeing closed-loop stability. In many practical applications,
the trade-off between conflicting requirements has to be made
so that a single norm can represent all design requirements. In
this case, minimizing this performance index is not very effec-
tive because the resulting controller is often conservative and the
achievable closed-loop performance is limited. What is more,
the selection of weighting functions to meet the trade-off be-
tween conflicting requirements is hard and time consuming [25].
To overcome these limitations of a single objective synthesis
technique, the multiobjective synthesis technique, which can in-
corporate various design specifications easily, is naturally con-
sidered. In our design process, the mixed output-feed-
back control with regional pole placement is applied to design
a wide-area damping controller.
A. Multiobjective Damping Controller Synthesis Formulation

with the th column of input matrix (corresponding to The configuration of the multiobjective damping controller
the th input) and the th row of output matrix (corre- synthesis is shown in Fig. 2. The output channel is associ-
sponding to the th output). and are the modulus and ated with the performance and the channel is associ-
Euclidean norm of , respectively; is the geometrical ated with performance. is a low-pass filter in the
angle between the input vector and the th left eigenvector, performance channel for output disturbance rejection. is
while is the geometrical angle between the output a high-pass filter or some small constant in performance
vector and the th right eigenvector. channel that is used to reduce the control effort. is a
The joint controllability/observability measure is defined by high-pass filter in the performance channel to ensure ro-
bustness against model uncertainties.
Good design specifications ensure high-performance and easy
(5) implementation of designed controllers. In the single objective
synthesis approach, the performance is used to evaluate
In the proposed design procedure, only a few measurements all design specifications like disturbance rejection, robustness
with the highest observability of interarea modes are selected and control effort. In contrast, in this multiobjective synthesis
as stabilizing signals and only a few generators with the highest approach, the performance is only used to measure robust-
controllability of those modes are chosen as control locations. ness against dynamic uncertainty. The performance is used to

Authorized licensed use limited to: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DELHI. Downloaded on August 05,2010 at 17:40:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 ZHANG AND BOSE: DESIGN OF WIDE-AREA DAMPING CONTROLLERS FOR INTERAREA OSCILLATIONS
Fig. 3. LMI region for pole placement.
measure control effort and output disturbance rejection because
control gives more suitable performance on system transient
behavior and control cost can be more realistically captured by
the norm [18]. Since our aim is to damp out interarea oscilla-
tions, the center-of-inertia (COI) differences between areas are
selected as controlled output associated with performance.
Pole-placement constraint is added to the multiobjective con-
trol problem shown in Fig. 2 to ensure good transient response
of the closed-loop system. This problem can be formulated in
the LMI framework.
B. LMI-Based Mixed Output-Feedback Control With
Regional Pole Placements
The multiobjective optimization problem discussed
above is solved by LMI techniques. It has been shown in [22]
that LMI provides a natural framework to formulate the mul-
tiobjective control problems without additional conservatism.
LMI offers more flexibility for combining several constraints on
the closed-loop system or objectives in a numerically tractable
manner. The resulting controllers do not in general suffer from
the problem of pole-zero cancellation [21]. Reference [20]
gives a detailed description of an LMI approach to such a
complex problem of mixed output-feedback control
with regional pole placement.
Good transient response can be achieved by placing all
closed-loop poles in a prescribed region in the left half plane.
Pole constraints are also useful to avoid fast dynamics and
high-frequency gain in the controller, which in turn facilitate
its digital implementation. Excessively large controller gains
should be avoided because they could lead to controller output
saturation and a poor large disturbance response of the system.
To avoid large feedback gains, the system poles should not be
shifted too far into the left half plane. Restricting the real parts
of the closed loop poles to be greater than a suitable negative
number inhibits such excessive shifting [23]. One LMI region
for all pole placement objectives discussed above is shown in
Fig. 3. When the closed-loop poles are in this region, it ensures
minimum damping ratio , minimum rate of decay
and acceptable controller gains.
V. WIDE-AREA DAMPING CONTROLLER DESIGN PROCEDURE
In this research, the design of wide-area damping controllers
for interarea oscillations includes the following steps:
1) System model and small signal analysis: The full-order
nonlinear model of the studied system is calculated using
Authorized licensed use limited to: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DELHI. Downloaded on August 05,2010 at 17:40:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1139
Matlab [19]. All generators are represented by detailed
models, i.e., the two-axis model with exciter, governor
and conventional PSS with two lead-lag compensation
blocks. The nonlinear model is linearized around a chosen
operating point. Then, small signal analysis is conducted
with this linear model to get the frequencies, shapes and
damping ratios of critical interarea modes.
2) Selection of measurements and control device locations:
Measurements that can be easily obtained and synchro-
nized and have the highest observability of critical inter-
area modes are good candidates for input signals. Geo-
metric measures of modal controllability/observability in-
troduced in Section III are used to evaluate the comparative
strength of candidate signals and the performance of con-
trollers at different locations with respect to a given inter-
area mode. The most often used input signals are voltage
magnitudes, voltage phase angle, line power or current, fre-
quency and generator rotor speeds.
3) Linear model reduction: The controller obtained by the
LMI approach is of full order, that is, the same size as the
design model including weighting functions. A middle size
system usually has several hundreds of states. To design a
controller with such a high order model is neither practical
nor necessary. Therefore, model reduction is often applied
to obtain a lower order model for controller design. The
reduced order model should be assured to have the same
global characteristics as the original system [24]. In this re-
search, the balanced model reduction via the Schur method
provided by the robust control toolbox in Matlab [19] is
used for the model reduction task.
4) Controller synthesis: An LMI approach to the mixed
output-feedback control with regional pole
placement is applied to design a wide-area damping
controller for interarea oscillations. The designed con-
troller should meet the requirements of robust stability,
robust performance and acceptable transient response.
Sometimes the order of the obtained controller still needs
to be reduced for easy implementation. In this case, the
balanced model reduction is applied again.
5) Closed-loop verification and nonlinear time domain sim-
ulation: The performance of the controller is evaluated in
the closed-loop system with the full-order linear model by
using Matlab. The controller is then tuned and its perfor-
mance in the actual nonlinear power system is evaluated by
time domain simulation using TSAT. The robustness of the
designed controller is verified for different operating con-
ditions and fault scenarios.
VI. RESULTS OF CASE STUDIES
A wide-area damping controller is designed for the New Eng-
land 39-bus ten-machine system, which is shown in Fig. 4. De-
tailed model descriptions and all parameters including network
data and dynamic data for the generators, excitation systems,
PSSs can be found in [28]. Some modifications have been made
to create a simple system modal structure so that the controller
design procedure can be illustrated more clearly. The system
is stressed by increasing the load and generation level. In this
design, the conventional PSSs are tuned for local modes first
 1140
Fig. 4. The 39-bus ten-machine test system.
TABLE I
CLASSIFICATION OF ELECTROMECHANICAL OSCILLATION MODES
by the method used in [1]. The wide-area controller is then de-
signed for the interarea modes.
• Full-order model and small signal analysis: All generators
are represented by the detailed model except generator 1,
which is an equivalent unit. The model is linearized around
a nominal operating point. Small signal analysis shows
that this system has several local and interarea modes with
damping ratios less than 10%. The classification of these
lightly damped modes is shown in Table I. Modes 4 to 8
are local ones. Even though their damping ratios are low,
they will not last beyond 10 s because of their relatively
large frequencies. It is not necessary to provide supple-
mental damping to these modes.
• Selection of measurements and control device locations:
The system has three coherent generator groups except
the equivalent generator G1. (G2, G3), (G8, G9, G10) and
(G4, G5, G6, G7) are nuclei of these groups correspond-
ingly. Several kinds of input signals, such as line active
Authorized licensed use limited to: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DELHI. Downloaded on August 05,2010 at 17:40:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 23, NO. 3, AUGUST 2008
TABLE II
MAXIMUM CONTROLLABILITY AND OBSERVABILITY MEASURE
FOR 39-BUS TEN-MACHINE SYSTEM
powers and currents, generator rotor speeds and voltage
phase angle difference, are compared. Table II shows the
control locations with maximum controllability and signals
with maximum observability with respect to different inter-
area modes. in Table II, is the current magnitude of the
line connecting bus and ; is the active power of the
line connecting bus and ; is the voltage angle dif-
ference between bus and . Reference [29] shows that for
high stress conditions, current magnitude is a better input
signal for the modulation of the parallel Pacific HVDC In-
tertie to damp Pacific AC Intertie oscillations. It is found in
this research that the active power and current of the same
line have nearly the same observability with respect to a
specific interarea mode. Line active power is selected as
the input signal of the designed controller in this research.
According to Table II, G3, G7 and G8 are selected as con-
trol locations. The selection of input signals is not very ob-
vious. A large number of measurements is undesirable be-
cause this will increase possible interaction between con-
trol loops and the cost for communication links.
is selected as an input signal for the damping of mode 2.
Since has good observability for both mode 1 and
mode 3, it is also selected as an input signal. As shown
in simulations, these two signals are enough. Each tie-line
power contains information of all interarea modes in dif-
ferent levels. In fact, itself contains enough infor-
mation for all three interarea modes and could be the only
input signal for the controller at the cost of a higher gain
and a little bit worse but still acceptable damping effects.
• Model reduction: The original linear model order is 88. It
is reduced to a 12th-order model by the method of balanced
model reduction.
• Controller synthesis: The hinfmix function available in
the LMI Control Toolbox of Matlab [19] was used to
perform the necessary computations. Two controllers are
designed. The first controller C1 has two input signals,
and . The second controller C2 has only
one input . Both controllers provide control signals
to generator G3, G7 and G8, as shown in Fig. 4. The
orders of two resulting controllers are reduced to 10. The
frequency response of controller C1 is shown in Fig. 5.
In each subplot, the upper curves show the amplitude
change and the lower curves show the phase shift, both as
functions of frequency. Weighting functions are given by
 ZHANG AND BOSE: DESIGN OF WIDE-AREA DAMPING CONTROLLERS FOR INTERAREA OSCILLATIONS 1141

Fig. 6. Rotor speed response of generator 5 to impulse disturbance.

Fig. 7. Performance improvement of controller C1 after tuning.

Fig. 5. Frequency response of controller C1. (a) Frequency response of control
loops from inputs to generator G3. (b) Frequency response of control loops from TABLE IV
inputs to generator G7. (c) Frequency response of control loops from inputs to DAMPING RATIOS AND FREQUENCIES OF INTERAREA
generator G8. MODES FOR DIFFERENT LINE OUTAGES

TABLE III
IMPROVED DAMPING OF INTERAREA MODES

nonlinear simulations. In our design process, controller pa-

• Closed-loop verification and nonlinear time domain simu-
lation: The resulting reduced-order controllers are first ver-
ified by small signal analysis. Table III shows the improved
damping of interarea modes with wide-area damping con-
trollers. Fig. 6 shows the impulse response of the rotor
speed deviation of generator 5 without and with the con-
trollers. The impulse signal is added to the input mechan-
ical torque of generator 5.
When implemented in the actual nonlinear system, the con-
troller designed with linear techniques may not have as
good performance and robustness as in linear simulation
because of the loss of some system properties in model
linearization and model reduction. It is necessary to tune
the controller parameters and verify its effectiveness with
rameters like gains, zeros and poles are manually modified
(tuned) from observation of the controller performance in
nonlinear simulations. Fig. 7 shows the performance im-
provement of the controller C1 after such tuning. The fault
is a three-phase fault on bus 27 for four cycles and the
curves are the transient response of active power in line
17–18.
The eigen-analysis of the system was carried out for
different operating points to verify the robustness of the
designed controller. Table IV displays the robustness of
the controller C1 in case of the outage of different heavily
loaded lines. Table V shows the performance of the con-
troller C1 for different tie-line flows between the area
containing generator G4, G5, G6, G7 and the rest of the
system. The same analysis conducted for the system with
controller C2 showed that controller C2 also improved the
damping of the interarea modes satisfactorily but not as
well as C1.

Authorized licensed use limited to: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DELHI. Downloaded on August 05,2010 at 17:40:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 1142
TABLE V
DAMPING RATIOS AND FREQUENCIES OF INTERAREA
MODES FOR DIFFERENT POWER FLOWS
Fig. 8. Active power of line 16–17 response to a three-phase fault on bus 16.
To evaluate the performance and robustness of the designed
controllers in different fault scenarios, nonlinear time do-
main simulations are conducted using TSAT. Controller
output limits are 10% of the synchronous machine ter-
minal voltage.
Two types of faults are simulated. The first type is a three-
phase short circuit fault applied to buses for four cycles.
Several critical buses connected with heavily loaded trans-
mission lines were tested. The second type is a three-phase
short circuit fault applied to transmission lines for four
cycles. The fault was cleared by taking out the faulted
line. Several critical heavily loaded transmission lines were
tested. The two controllers achieved satisfactory damping
effects for all of these scenarios. Fig. 8 shows the transient
response of the active power in line 16–17 to a three-phase
fault applied to bus 16. Fig. 9 shows the transient response
of the active power in line 15–16 to a three-phase fault ap-
plied to line 16–24. It can be seen that the damping effect
of controller C1 is a little better than controller C2. This
shows the benefit brought by using more measurements,
which provide more system dynamic information.
VII. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, a systematic design procedure for wide-area
damping control systems is described. A centralized structure is
proposed for such systems. The comparative strength of candi-
date input signals and the performance of output control signals
at different locations with respect to interarea modes are evalu-
ated by geometric measures of controllability/observability. The
synthesis of the robust MIMO controller is defined as a problem
of mixed output-feedback control with regional pole
Authorized licensed use limited to: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DELHI. Downloaded on August 05,2010 at 17:40:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 23, NO. 3, AUGUST 2008
Fig. 9. Active power of line 15–16 response to a three-phase fault on line
16–24.
placement and is resolved by the LMI approach. The final step
of the design method is the tuning and testing of this linearly
synthesized controller on full nonlinear simulations to obtain
the desired robustness and control performance. This design
method was tested on the 39-bus New England system. From
the simulation results, the following conclusions can be drawn:
• Geometric measures of controllability/observability are ef-
fective in evaluating the comparative strength of candidate
stabilizing signals of widely differing types.
• Active powers and current magnitudes on tie-lines are good
choices for stabilizing signals with respect to critical inter-
area oscillation modes.
• For the small size system considered, one stabilizing signal
is enough for the input of a WADC. Multiple inputs im-
prove the control performance only slightly for such small
systems but are expected to be necessary for acceptable
control performance in large systems.
• Mixed output-feedback control with regional
pole placement can be applied to the wide-area damping
controller synthesis with good results which cannot be
obtained by using only one of them.
• For a controller designed with linear techniques, a tuning
process is necessary to ensure its performance in the ac-
tual nonlinear systems. Nonlinear simulation using a typ-
ical transient stability program like TSAT is required to
show that such a design of a wide-area damping controller
is effective in a practical implementation.
The above results are promising but the results also show that
the use of linear, continuous methods to design a controller, al-
though very powerful, requires considerable tuning, testing and
further development in the nonlinear, discontinuous real world.
As shown in this paper, the testing by nonlinear simulation using
a production grade transient stability program can establish the
robustness of the controller design, i.e., the effectiveness of the
controller over a range of operating conditions. As wide-area
controllers have to be discontinuous by necessity, the digital
sampling rate and possible communication latency are variables
that affect performance. Both the design process and the testing
should take these into account. Research is still needed to do so
as the present day production grade simulations like TSAT are
not capable of representing such communication variables. In
 ZHANG AND BOSE: DESIGN OF WIDE-AREA DAMPING CONTROLLERS FOR INTERAREA OSCILLATIONS
our future work we intend to do such development of the design
capabilities as well as move the testing to a simulation of larger
systems such as the WECC system. These types of design and
testing tools need to be developed before such controllers be-
come robust enough for implementation in real systems.
REFERENCES
[1] Aboul-Ela, A. Sallam, J. McCalley, and A. Fouad, “Damping con-
troller design for power system oscillations using global signals,” IEEE
Trans. Power Syst., vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 767–773, May 1996.
[2] R. A. Ramos, L. F. C. Alberto, and N. G. Bretas, “A new methodology
for the coordinated design of robust decentralized power system
damping controllers,” IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 19, no. 1, pp.
444–454, Feb. 2004.
H1
[3] Z. Chuanjiang, M. Khammash, V. Vittal, and Q. Wenzheng, “Robust
power system stabilizer design using loop shaping approach,”
IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 810–818, May 2003.
[4] G. E. Boukarim, S. Wang, J. H. Chow, G. N. Taranto, and N. Martins,
“A comparison of classical, robust, and decentralized control designs
for multiple power system stabilizers,” IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol.
15, no. 4, pp. 1287–1292, Nov. 2000.
[5] W. A. Mittelstadt et al., “The DOE wide area measurement system
(WAMS) project—Demonstration of dynamic information technology
for future power system,” in Proc. Fault and Disturbance Analysis &
Precise Measurements in Power Systems, Arlington, VA, Nov. 1995.
[6] A. G. Phadke, “Synchronized phasor measurements—A historical
overview,” in Proc. IEEE/Power Eng. Soc. Transmission and Distribu-
tion Conf. Exhib., 2002, pp. 416–479.
[7] J. Quintero and V. Venkatasubramanian, “A real-time wide-area con-
trol framework for mitigating small-signal instability in large electric
power systems,” in Proc. 38th Annu. Hawaii Int. Conf. System Sciences,
Jan. 3–6, 2005.
[8] I. Kamwa, J. Béland, G. Trudel, R. Grondin, C. Lafond, and D.
McNabb, “Wide-area monitoring and control at Hydro-Québec: Past,
present and future,” in Proc. IEEE Power Eng. Soc. Summer Meeting,
Jun. 18–22, 2006, pp. 1–12.
[9] I. Kamwa, A. Heniche, G. Trudel, M. Dobrescu, R. Grondin, and D.
Lefebvre, “Assessing the technical value of FACTS-based wide-area
damping control loops,” in Proc. IEEE Power Eng. Soc. General
Meeting, Jun. 12–16, 2005, vol. 2, pp. 1734–1743.
[10] A. F. Snyder et al., “Delay-input wide-area stability control with
synchronized phasor measurements,” in Proc. IEEE Power Eng. Soc.
Summer Meeting, Jul. 16–20, 2000, vol. 2, pp. 1009–1014.
[11] H. Ni, G. T. Heydt, and L. Mili, “Power system stability agents using
robust wide area control,” IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 17, no. 4, pp.
1123–1131, Nov. 2002.
[12] I. Kamwa, R. Grondin, and Y. Hebert, “Wide-area measurement based
stabilizing control of large power systems—A decentralized/hierar-
chical approach,” IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 136–153,
Feb. 2001.
[13] A. M. A. Hamdan and A. M. Elabdalla, “Geometric measures of
modal controllability and observability of power systems models,”
Elect. Power Syst. Res., vol. 15, pp. 147–155, 1988.
[14] K. Tomsovic, D. E. Bakken, V. Venkatasubramanian, and A. Bose,
“Designing the next generation of real-time control, communication,
and computations for large power systems,” Proc. IEEE, vol. 93, no. 5,
pp. 965–979, May 2005.
[15] B. Chaudhuri and B. C. Pal, “Robust damping of inter-area oscilla-
tions through controllable phase shifters using global signals,” in Proc.
IEEE Power Eng. Soc. General Meeting, Jul. 13–17, 2003, vol. 3, pp.
1673–1679.
Authorized licensed use limited to: INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY DELHI. Downloaded on August 05,2010 at 17:40:06 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1143
[16] N. Martins and L. T. G. Lima, “Determination of suitable locations for
power system stabilizers and Static VAR Compensators for damping
electromechanical oscillations in large scale power systems,” IEEE
Trans. Power Syst., vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 1455–1469, Nov. 1990.
[17] P. Zhang, A. R. Messina, A. Coonick, and B. J. Cory, “Selection of lo-
cations and input signals for multiple SVC damping controllers in large
scale power systems,” in Proc. IEEE Power Eng. Soc. Winter Meeting,
1998, pp. 667–670.
[18] B. C. Pal, A. H. Coonick, and B. J. Cory, “Linear matrix inequality
versus Root-locus approach for damping inter-area oscillations in
power systems,” Elect. Power Energy Syst., vol. 23, no. 6, p. 48149,
Aug. 2001.
[19] “Matlab Users Guide,” MathWorks, Natick, MA, 1998.
[20] C. Scherer, P. Gahinet, and M. Chilali, “Multiobjective output-feed-
back control via LMI optimization,” IEEE Trans. Autom. Control, vol.
42, no. 7, pp. 896–911, Jul. 1997.
H1
[21] P. Gahinet and P. Apkarian, “A linear matrix inequality approach to
control,” Int. J. Robust Nonlin. Control, vol. 4, pp. 421–448, 1994.
[22] S. Boyd, L. EI Ghaoui, E. Feron, and V. Balakrishnan, Linear Matrix
Inequalities in System and Control Theory. Philadelphia, PA: SIAM,
Jun. 1994, vol. 15, Studies in Applied Mathematics.
[23] P. Shrikant Rao and I. Sen, “Robust pole placement stabilizer design
using linear matrix inequalities,” IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 15, no.
1, pp. 313–319, Feb. 2000.
[24] J. J. Sinchez-Gasca and J. H. Chow, “Power system reduction to
simplify the design of damping controllers for inter-area oscillations,”
IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 1342–1349, Aug. 1996.
[25] K. Zhou, J. C. Doyle, and K. Glover, Robust and Optimal Control.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1996.
[26] “TSAT Version 4.1 User’s manual,” PowerTech Labs, Sep. 2004.
[27] A. Heniche and I. Kamwa, “Control loops selection to damp inter-area
oscillations of electrical networks,” IEEE Trans. Power Syst., vol. 17,
no. 2, pp. 378–384, May 2002.
[28] Extended transient-midterm stability package, Jan. 1987, EPRI
EL-4610, Project 1208, Fin. Rep.
[29] R. L. Cresap, D. N. Scott, W. A. Mittelstadt, and C. W. Taylor,
Damping of Pacific AC Intertie Oscillations Via Modulation of the
Parallel Pacific HVDC Intertie, CIGRE 14-05, 1978.
[30] C. W. Taylor et al., “WACS-wide-area stability and voltage control
system: R&D and online demonstration,” Proc. IEEE, vol. 93, no. 5,
pp. 892–906, May 2005.
Yang Zhang (S’05) received the B.Eng. degree from North China Electric
Power University, Baoging, China, in 1997 and the M.Eng. degree from China
Electric Power Research Institute (CEPRI), Beijing, China, in 2001. He is now
pursuing the Ph.D. degree at Washington State University, Pullman, WA.
He worked for CEPRI from 2001 to 2004. His special fields of interest in-
cluded power system stability and real time control.
Anjan Bose (F’89) received the B.Tech. (Honors) degree from the Indian In-
stitute of Technology, Kharagpur, the M.S. degree from the University of Cali-
fornia, Berkeley, and the Ph.D. from Iowa State University, Ames.
He has worked for industry, academe, and government for 40 years in power
system planning, operation, and control. He is currently Regents Professor and
holds the endowed Distinguished Professor in Power Engineering at Washington
State University, Pullman, WA.
Dr. Bose is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the recip-
ient of the Herman Halperin Award and the Millenium Medal from the IEEE.