Proceedings of The
IEEE International Conference
on Industrial Technology, 1996
Applying Structured Singular Values and a New LQR Design to
Robust Decentralized Power System Load Frequency Control
T. C. Yang
School of Engineering, University of Sussex, Brighton, BNl 9QT, UK
Abstract- The design of decentralized robust load
frequency control for interconnected power sys-
tems is studied in this paper. It is shown that, sub-
ject to a condition based on the Structured Singu-
lar Values (SSVs), each local area load-frequency
controller can be designed independently. The ro-
bust stability condition for the overall system can
be easily stated as to achieve a sufficient interac-
tion margin introduced in this paper, and a suf-
ficient gain and phase margin defined in classi-
cal feedback theory during each independent de-
sign. Within this general framework, each local
area controller design is based on a new Linear
Quadratic Regulator (LQR) design approach [l],
I. INTRODUCTION
In the dynamical operation of power systems, it is usu-
ally important t o aim for decentralization of control action
to individual areas. This aim should coincide with the
requirements for stability and load-frequency scheduling
within the overall system. In the load-frequency control
function, it is necessary that the system frequency and
the inter-area tie-line power are kept as near to the sched-
uled values as possible through control action. In this pa-
per, the problem of decentralised load-frequency controller
design is translated into an equivalent problem of decen-
tralised controller design for a Multi-Input, Multi-Output
(MIMO) control system. The proposed design method
is base on SSVs and a new LQR design approach. The
method is illustrated by a design for a sample two-area
power system, which is widely used by the researchers in
this area [3,4].
IT. DECENTRALIZED DESIGN BASED ON SSVs
A. A Sample System
Figure 1 is a block diagram for the load-frequency con-
trol of a two-area power system. The nomenclature used
and the nominal parameter values, in per unit (pu), are
given in the Appendix. A state-space model can be con-
structed as:
x = Ax + Bu
0-7803-3104-4 ' 880
H. Cimen
Af2 A p ~ 2A P G ~APCzIT
and A E RgX9, B E R g x 2and C E R Z x 9 .The system
is stable and the control task is t o minimize the system
frequecy deviation Afi in area 1, Afz in area 2 and the
deviation in the tie-line power flow APti, between the two
areas under the load disturbances A P D , and A p ~ 2 in the
two areas. Since the system parameters for the two areas
are identical and the Apt,, is caused by Af1 - Afz, the
system performance can be simply tested by applying a
disturbance A P D to ~ the system and observing the time
response of A f i . Some simulation results for A f1 when
a step disturbance of apD1 = 0 . 0 1 is ~ ~applied to the
system are plotted in Figure 9, 10 and 11 as dashed lines.
B. Transform Into An Equzvalent Deszgn Problem
In general, an m-area power system load-frequency con-
trol problem can be modelled as a complex system consist-
ing of m subsystems:
k = A,x Bmu +
y = c ,x (2)
w h e r e u = [ u I , ..., u m I T ; y = [ y l , ..., y m ]T =
[ A f l , .'., Afm IT x = [ XI, ..., x, IT and x, are the
state variables for the i-th area (i-th subsystem). The
sample system used here is a special case of m = 2.
An m x m transfer function matrix G(s) linking U(s) =
[ ~ I ( s ) !..., u m ( s ) IT and Y(s) = [ Y~(s), ..., y m ( 8 ) I T :
= G(s)U(s)
Y ( S ) G ( s ) = [sij(s)lc,J=l,,m (3)
can be calculated as:
G(s) = C,(SI - Am)-'Bm (4)
The design of m decentralized local controllerr now be-
comes the design of a m x m diagonal matrix F(s) =
diag[fi(s)]a,l, ,m as shown in Figure 2.
If all siJ(.) (i # j ) in G ( s ) were equal to zero, then
each controller could be designed independently just as if
it were in a SISO system as shown in Figure 3. However,
since g,,(s) [i # j ) are not zeros, the following question
must be resolved, i.e., ifeach f,(s) (i = 1,...,m) is designed
to form a stable closed-loop system as shown in Figure 3,
what are the additional conditions which can guarantee
that the global system of Figure 2 is stable? The answer
to this question is discussed in the next subsec'tion based
on the theorem given by Grosdidier and Morar (Theorem
3 in their paper [2]).
-
C. Decentralazed Controller Desagn for MIMO systenbh
In Grosdidier and Morar's paper, a transfer function
G(s) = [g2J(s)]z,3=1,2, for a m x m MIMO plant is de-
composed into:
1 G(s) = G(s) G(s) + (5)
where G(s) = diag[g,,(s)],,l,z, h
is a diagonal matrix;
all diagonal elements in G(s) are zeros and off-diagonal
elements in G(s) are equal to those in G(s).
Using the notations:
- E(s) = e ( s ) G-'(s) (6)
H(s) +
= G(s)F(s)(I G(s)F(s))-l = diag[h,(s)] (7)
~ ( s = +
) G ( ~ ) F ( ~ ) ( I G(S)F(.))-~ (8)
where F(s) = diag[f,(s)],,l,2, is a diagonal transfer
function for a decentralized controller in Figure 2; H(s) or
H(s) is a closed-loop transfer function matrix for a feed-
back system consisting of F(s) and G(s),or F(s) and G(s)
respectively. Grosdidier and Morar have proved the follow-
ing theorem:
The closed-loop system H(s) is stable if
(c-1) G(s) and s ( s ) have the same number of Right
Half Plane (RHP) poles;
(c-2) G(s) is stable; and
(c-3)* G 7 z a z ( H ( j w ) ) < p - l ( E ( & J ) ) vu
where nmazdenotes the maximum singular value; and
1-1 denotes Doyle's structured singular value with respe$
to the decentralized controller structure of F(s). Since H
is a diagonal matrix in this paper, condrtion (c-3)* can be
replaced by:
(c-3) lh,(jw)l < p-l(E(jw)) Vw (i == 1 , 2 , ...m )
where 1 1 denotes the magnitude.
This theorem gives suflczent conditions for the system
H(s) to be stable if the controller design is based on the
w 111. LOCAL AREA CONTROLLER DESIGN
fully non-interactive model G ( s ) , i.e. each f i ( s ) is de-
signed, independently, based on an SISO model g;,(s). In
particular, condition (c-3) states that the magnitude of the
frequency response of SISO closed-loop transfer function
scalar frequency dependent function p-'(E(ju)). Grosdi-
dier and Morar have also proved that [2], although (c-3)
is a sufficient condition and therefore may have some con-
servativeness, compared with the other conditions devel-
oped for the independent decoupled design, for example
the diagonal dominant condition and the generalised diag-
onal dominant condition, (c-3) gives the tightest restric-
tive band and is the least conservative. However, since
the same restriction p-'(E(jw)) is applied to all hi(s) in
condition (c-3), a modification on this condition [2] can
be made to provide more flexibility and to reduce further
the possible conservativeness caused by the inflexibility in
condition (c-3):
* 881
(c-4)*
umaz(W-' ( j w )H( j u ) )< p-' ( E ( j w ) W ( j w)) V u
where W(s) = diag[wi(s)],,l,z, is a properly chosen
diagonal weighting function matrix. (c-4)* can also be
replaced by:
(c-4) / h i ( j w ) w i l ( j w ) l < p - l ( E ( j ~ ) W ( j w ) ) Vw
( i = 1 , 2 , .."
Due t o w,rl(jw) in (c-4), although
p-l(E(jw)(W(jw)) is still the same for all SISO loops,
the restrictions on Ihi(jw)l are different. In fact, (c-3) is a
special case of (c-4) with W = I .
Before applying the above results developed in [a] to our
system, it is necessary t o consider the issue of the robust
stability.
The stabilitjr condition (c-4) is given for the nominal
plant G(s). If the state space model of equation (1)
changes, the plant model G(s) will also change. It is
genarally not possible to establish a clear relationship be-
tween the change of values in (1) and the change of values
involved in condition (c-4). For this reason, we specify the
robust stability conditions as:
(r-1) Condition (c-4) is satisfied with a sufficient mar-
gin. This can be checked by plotting Ihi(ju)l and
p-'(E(jw)W(jw))lwi(jw)I on the same graph and an in-
teraction margin for loop i can be defined as the shortest
vertical distance between the two curves.
(r-2) There are sufficient gain and phase margins in each
SISO loop for the stability. This can also be checked by a
Bode or Nyquist plot of f % ( j w ) g , , ( j w ) .
For the given sample system, m = 2 and the equivalent
MIMO system can be represented by Figure 4. A plot
of p-l(E(ju)) is given in Figure 5 as a solid line (W is
chosen as I and is neglected).
Now consider a system enclosed by a block with bro-
ken lines in Figure 1, the system has an input u1 and an
output y1, and a state-space model for this system can be
constructed as:
X0 = A'x" + b"U1
y1 = coxo (9)
where
XO = [ Afi APT^ A P G ~APC1lT
A" E R4X4, bo E R4 and CO E R4.Inspection of Figure 1
shows that, a transfer function:
gyl(s) = co(sI - A0)-lbo (101
is equal to gll(s) given in Figure 4 if AP,i,(t) E 0. It is
well known that, for the system represented by Figure 1,
APtie(t 00) = 0 after step load disturbances. However,
in general:
Sll(S) = SIl(S>+Am(.) (11)

where Agll(s) # 0. For the purpose of a local controller
design, we can consider gil(s) as a nominal model for
gll(s) and with an uncertainty Aglljs).
Figure 6 gives the magnitude frequency responses of
gfl(s) and gll(s) and it can be seen that, g:l(s) is a rea-
sonably good approximation of g11(s).
Since the plant parameters in the two areas are identi-
cal, we only need t o consider decentralized local controller
for area 1. To design a local controller based on the nomi-
nal model of g:,(s), i.e., the state-space model of equation
(9), it is necessary to obtain sufficient stability margins as
stated in (r-1) and (r-2), in order to have a robust perfor-
mance for the global system represented by Figure 1. This
is also because that the gil(s) is an approximation of the
“plant mode!” gll(s) given in Figure 4.
It is known that, for a SISO system, a state feedback
based linear quadratic regulator design to minimise:
, r03
leads to an equivalent SISO feedback loop as shown in Fig-
ure 7, where k is a state-feedback vector obtained from the
LQR design. In has been proved that [5], for the feedback
loop shown in Figure 7, the resulting optimal control sys-
tem has an infinite gain margin, a phase margin of at least
60° and a significant amount of system nonlinearity can be
sustained without instability. The special characteristics
of the Nyquist plot for the open-loop system in Figure 7
can also provide some information about the closed-loop
system frequency response of - yl(s) i.e., the frequency re-
U 1 Is’)’
- \ I
sponse of h l ( s ) concerned in the robust condition of (c-1).
The main difficulty of LQR design is to choose the
weighting functions in (12). Aldeen and Crusca has pro-
posed [l]a systematic approach t o choose these functions
and applied this approach to power system stabilizer de-
sign. This approach is also adopted here and the main
procedures are illustrated below.
The model of equation (9) is first transferred into its
balanced form:
X b = AbXb + bbU
Y = cbxh
where
xo = T-lXb Ab = TA0T-’
b b = TbO cb = C O T - ’
and T is a transformation matrix. In this balanced form,
the controllability and observability gramians, denoted by
W, and WOrespectively, of the system eqn. 13 are equal:
W, = WO= C = diag(a1, ..., a?,a1+1,..., a,)
where n is the order of the system; ui 2 ui+l 2 0 ( i =
1, ..., n - 1) are called the Hankel singular values (HSVs);
and I is the number of most dominant (most controllable
and observable) modes.
- 882
~
The transformation yields the state vector of the bal-
anced system xb having its elements ordered according to
their combined measures of controllability and observabil-
ity, reflected by its associated HSVs. The most (the least)
controllable and observable state will appear as the first
(the last) elenent in the state vector of the balanced sys-
tem. Based on the above analysis, the choise of the Q
matrix is made as follows:
(i) The first 1 states of the balanced system are those
states which are deemed t o contribute most to the dynami-
cal behaviour of the system. Thus they should be weighted
according to their contribution.
(ii) Ignore the last n - I states of the balanced system
by placing zero weighting on them. This is because those
last n - 1 states are poorly controllable and/or observable,
and therefore play a minor role in the dynamical behavior
of the system. Thus it is impractical and useless t o expend
energy, which has to be very high, on these states.
With regard t o the I retained states, obviously the j-th
( j = 1,..., 1) state is more controllable and observable and
therefore plays a more important role in the system dy-
namics than the following I - j states. This means that
the j-th state requires less control effort than the follow-
ing ones t o affect a change in its status. (i.e., it is more
economical to use to affect a change in the system dy-
namics). Therefore, to exploit the physical characteristics
of the states and their role in the system dynamical be-
haviour, each state should be weighted according t o the
ratio of its contribution with respect t o the most control-
lable and observable one, i.e., the first state:
&b = diag(1, -,a1 -,a1 ..., -,61 0, 0, ..., 0)
U2 a3 Cl
Once Q b is obtained, it is transformed back into the
original system coordinates:
Q = T*&bT
where T* is the conjugate transpose of T .
T in (12) is selected to make an appropriated “gain” of k
and an appropriated interaction margin as stated in (r-1).
A smaller r implies a weak penalty on the control signal, +
and hence leads to a “bigger” k. Since the frequency re-
sponse of hl(s) is affected by the feedback control, this in
(13) turn will affect the interaction margin. In practice, r can
be chosen as:
r=y-
e
61
where B = trace@) and y is a parameter chosen by the
designer.
For the system considered here, it is found that
C = diag( 3.435, 2.6782, 0.7871, 0.0299 )
1 is therefore chosen as 3. This leads to:
[ 3.278 -0.567 -1.420 4.535
-0.567
& = -1.420
4.535
8.278
12.52
43.42
12.52 43.42
19.39 70.34-
70.34 344.6 I
 By choosing y = 1 and r = 2.027, the feedback gains
obtained are:
le = [ 4.847 6.373 2.743 - 12.11 ]
The frequency response of
Ihl(jw)l, where h l ( s ) = -
y l ( s ) is obtained from Figure 1
U1 (4
when the above state feedback k is connected, is plotted
in Figure 5 as a dashed line. The interaction margin de-
fined before is 10.26db at a freuency of LI M 2.95 rad./sec.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
To test system performance, a step load disturbance of
APD, = 0.Olpu is applied t o area 1 and the system output
of Af1 is observed. An Integration-Absolute-Error-Time
(IAET) criteria of the following form is also used:
system performance is robust and better than that if an-
other robust design method proposed in [3] is used.
VI. REFERENCES
[l]M. Aldeen and F. Crusca, “Multimachine power sys-
tem stabiliser design based on new LQR approach,” IEE
Proc.-Gener. Transm. Distra., Vo1.142, No.5, Sep. 1995,
pp .494-502.
[2] P. Grosdidier and M. Morari, “Interaction mea-
sures for system under decentralized control,” Automatica,
V01.22, No.3, 1986, pp.309-319.
[3] Y. Wang, R. Zhou and C. Wen, “Robust ioad-
frequency controller design for power systems,” IEE
Proceednngs-C, Vo1.140, No.1, Jan. 1993, pp.11-16.
[4] C.M. Liaw and K.H. Chao, “On the design of an
optimal automatic generation controller for interconnected

JIAET = 1000
lo lAfl(t)ltdt
In the simulation study, the linear model of a non-
power system” Int. J. Contr., Vo1.58, 1993, pp.113-127.
[5] B.D. Anderson and J . Moore, Linear optzmal control,
Prentjce-Hall, 1971.
reheating turbine -in Figure 1 is replaced by a non- VII. APPENDIX: NOMENCLATURE
APG
linear model of Figure 8 with 6 = 0.015. This is t o take TT : Turbine time constant, T T ~ =T T ~
= 0.3s.
into account the Generating Rate Constrain (GRC), i.e., TG : Governor time constant, T G =~ T G =~ 0.08s.
the practical limit o n t h e response speed of a turbine. Tp : Power system time constant, Tpl = Tp2 = 20s.
A number of simulations, using the nominal plant pa- R : Regulation paremeter,
rameters and those changed by some percentage, have R1 = Rz = 2.4Hz/puMW.
been carried out for three different cases. -The JIAET val- Kp : Power system gain,
ues obtained are listed in Table 1, where: It>l = Kp2 = 1 2 0 H ~ / p u M W .
(1) Case A: two identical controllers designed in Section T 1 2 : Synchronising coefficient, T12 = 0.545puMW.
3 are added to the system of Figure 1, B : Frequency bias parameter,
(2) Case B: two decentralized area controllers designed B1 = B2 = 0.425puMW/Ht.
by the method of “Designing stabilizing controllers for un- PD : Load disturbance.
certain systems using the Riccati equation approach” [3] K : Integration gain, K1 = K2 = 1.
are connected to the system of Figure 1, and a12 : The ratio between the base values of two areas,

(3) Case C: no additional controller is connected to the a12 = -1.

system represented by Figure 1.

Some selected time response plots are given in Figure Table 1: JIAET values (*: the system is unstable)
-
9, 10 and 11. In these figures, solid lines are for Case A, Test Parameter Case Case Case
dashed-dotted lines are for Case B, dashed lines are for -No Changes A B C
Case C. 0 0% 2.5 6.9 34.4
The above results show that, in comparison with both 1 +5 % 2.7 6.6 60.8
no additional controller and with the cointrollers designed 2 -5 % 2.6 7.2 20.8
by the method give in [3], the system performance is sig- 3 +10 % 2.6 6.3 105.0
nificantly improved by the controllers designed in this pa- 4 -10 % 2.5 7.8 13.2
per; and that this performance is robust against the plant 5 +15 % 2.6 6.1 172.4
parameter changes. This can be seen from the values of 6 -15 % 2.6 8.3 9.3
JIAET listed in the column of “Case A” in Table 1, which 7 +20 % 2.7 8.0 (281.1)”
are all between 2.5 and 2.9. 8, -20 % 2.5 9.0 6.5
9 +25 % 2.8 5.9 (471.2)*
V. CONCLUSION 10 -25 % 2.6 9.5 4.7
A new robust decentralized power system load- 11 +30 % 2.9 5.8 (686.9) *
frequency controller design method is proposed in this pa- 12 -30 % 2.7 10.4 3.7
per. The simulation results have demonstrated that the
 10.' ion io' IO'

Figure 6. Bode plot of E; (solid line) and (dashed line)

7q-p (SI-A ')-I bo

~ ~

Figure 7. An equivalent SISO control system

Figure 1. Block diagram of a two-area power system

Figure 8. A nonlinear turbine model with GRC

P i p r e 2. An equvilant MIMO system

I I

Pigwe 3. Independent SISO system design

- 0
h",*<*fO >

Figure 9 Dynamcresponse of A fi Test No.0

, . . . .. . .a. , .. . .. ..
r
I".{S.C >
Figure 10. Dynamicresponse of A fi Test NOS

Figure4. A two-input two-output system

. . .
1W

..... .
a
E
.E 0
d

-100 I
io-' ioo io' io2 .-**a3
Frquency (radisec)

Figure 5. Bode plot of It-' (Rbw))(solid line) and hl (dashed line) Figure 1 1 . . Dynamic response of A f, Test N0.6