Applied Soft Computing 11 (2011) 4581–4590

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Applied Soft Computing

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/asoc

Neural network predictive control of UPFC for improving transient stability

performance of power system
Sheela Tiwari a,∗ , Ram Naresh b , R. Jha a
a
Department of Instrumentation and Control Engineering, Dr. B R Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, Punjab, India
b
Department of Electrical Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper presents a neural network predictive controller for the UPFC to improve the transient stability
Received 27 August 2010 performance of the power system. A neural network model for the power system is trained using the back-
Received in revised form 13 May 2011 propagation learning method employing the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm for faster convergence.
Accepted 1 August 2011
This neural identifier is then utilized during predictive control of the UPFC. The damped Gauss–Newton
Available online 11 August 2011
method employing ‘backtracking’ as the line search method for step selection is used by the predictive
controller to predict the future control inputs. The 4- machine 2-area power system which is a bench-
Keywords:
mark power system is used to demonstrate the performance of the proposed controller. The system
Neural networks
Predictive control
under consideration is simulated for different transients over a range of operating conditions using Mat-
Identification lab/Simulink. The proposed neural network predictive controller exhibits superior damping performance
Power system transient stability in comparison to the conventional PI controller. The simulation results also establish convergence of the
Unified power flow controller (UPFC) minimization algorithm to an acceptable solution within single iteration.
© 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
With the increase in electrical power demand, power systems
are increasingly becoming complex to operate and at the same time
less secure. Such a stressed system is continuously under threat of
losing stability following a disturbance. Though power system sta-
bilizers (PSSs) have been commonly employed for damping rotor
oscillations but the damping provided by the PSS has been found to
be inadequate under many operating conditions. This inadequacy
in damping the rotor oscillations is especially prominent in inter-
area oscillations, thereby resulting into a requirement of some
additional control. In recent times, the availability of high power
semiconductor devices for power system applications have led to
technologies such as Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) for
secure loading, power flow control and damping of power system
oscillations. The FACTS devices have emerged as effective alter-
natives of the additional control required for damping the power
system oscillations. Of all the FACTS devices, the unified power flow
controller (UPFC) is the most versatile and capable of providing
stability to the system subjected to transient disturbances due to
its ability to control, simultaneously or selectively, all the param-
eters affecting power flow in the transmission line, i.e. voltage,
impedance and phase angle [1].
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 9779090688.
E-mail address: tiwaris@nitj.ac.in (S. Tiwari).
Numerous control strategies have been reported for using the
UPFC effectively. The most commonly employed controllers for
the UPFC have been of the PID (Proportional + Integral + Derivative)
type because of their simplicity and ease in design. However, these
controllers suffer from a serious drawback in the form of deteri-
oration in the performance when the system is made to operate
under widely ranging operating conditions and subjected to tran-
sients. To overcome this drawback, controllers based on robust
control techniques [2–5] and direct methods [6–8] have been used.
A model-free approach providing non-linear control is offered by
the fuzzy logic approach and is reported in the literature [9–12].
Neural networks offer alternatives to the conventional linear and
non-linear control methods. They have an inherent capability to
learn and store information regarding the non-linearities of the
system and provide this information whenever required. This ren-
ders the neural networks suitable for system identification and
control applications [8,13–16]. Two separate continually online-
trained neurocontrollers employing neuroidentifiers are reported
[14] where the parameters of both the neuroidentifiers and neuro-
controllers were updated continuously based on the error only one
time step ahead. However, this adaptation is based on a short term
goal and may not ensure a long term satisfactory performance. A
single neuron radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) using
H∞-learning method has been reported [15] to improve transient
stability performance of power system. However, this work uses a
genetic optimization scheme to optimize a set of coefficients in the
described method which may increase the computation time.

1568-4946/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.asoc.2011.08.003
4582 S. Tiwari et al. / Applied Soft Computing 11 (2011) 4581–4590

Nomenclature

Vpq voltage injected by the series inverter of the UPFC.

Vpqmax maximum magnitude of Vpq .
Vd , Vq in-phase and quadrature components of Vpq with
respect to line current, respectively.
V1 voltage at bus 1, common to the series and shunt
transformers.
V0 voltage at the other end of the series transformer.
V2 voltage at bus 2.
ˇ phase angle of the series injected voltage with
respect to the common bus voltage.
ı power angle.
Po active power at the other end of the series trans-
former.
Poref reference value for Po . Fig. 1. Circuit arrangement of the UPFC.
Qo reactive power at the other end of the series trans-
former.
X reactance of the system between buses 1 and 2.
Vdc DC link capacitor voltage in the UPFC. from a common dc link provided by a dc storage capacitor and func-
r(n) input to the reference model. tions as an ideal ac-to-ac power converter where real power can
yr (n) tracking reference signal. flow freely in either direction between the ac terminals of the two
u(n) control input to the plant. converters [1]. Each converter has the ability to generate/absorb
u (n) tentative control input to the neural identifier. reactive power at its own ac output terminals. The series converter
Pm value of the active output power predicted by the provides the main function of the UPFC by injecting a voltage Vpq
neural identifier. (which essentially acts as a synchronous ac voltage source) with
Vqr randomly generated value of Vq . controllable magnitude Vpq (0 ≤ Vpq ≤ Vpqmax ) and phase angle ˇ
Vq tentative value of Vq . (0 ≤ ˇ ≤ 2␲) in series with the line via an insertion transformer. The
C cost function transmission line current flowing through this ac voltage source
N1 , N2 , Nu specify the horizon over which the tracking error (injected ac voltage Vpq ) results into an exchange of real and reac-
and the control increments are evaluated. tive power between it and the ac system. This exchanged real power
 control weighting factor. at the ac terminal appears as a positive or negative real power
C(k) cost function during kth iteration. demand across the common dc link after conversion into dc power
Vq tentative values of Vq from the instant (n + 1) to whereas the reactive power exchanged is generated internally by
(n + Nu ). the converter. The real power demand appearing across the com-
k step size during kth iteration. mon dc link is converted back to ac by the shunt converter and
pk descent direction during kth iteration. coupled to the transmission line bus via a shunt connected trans-
yk Jacobian of C during kth iteration. former. This exchange of real power between the series converter
Hk −1 inverse of Hessian of C during kth iteration. and the transmission line, effected by the voltage of variable mag-
nitude and phase angle injected by the series converter not only
increases the amount of energy transferred but also results in an
enhancement of the transient stability and reliability of the power
In order to improve the transient response of a multi-machine
system.
power system, a neural network predictive controller for the series
branch of the UPFC is presented. The proposed controller uses a
neural network to identify the system and employs predictive con-
trol for the system subjected to transients. The performance of the 2.1. UPFC series branch control
system already equipped with PSS and using the proposed con-
troller is compared with the performance of the system using PI- Independent real and reactive power flow control can be
controlled UPFC and also with the system having only PSS and no achieved by injecting a series voltage with appropriate magnitude
UPFC. and phase angle. The series inverter of the UPFC injects a voltage of
The paper proceeds as follows. In Section 2, the principal oper- variable magnitude and phase angle. Taking the line current as the
ation and control of UPFC is presented. Section 3 provides a brief reference, the series compensation voltage is split into two com-
overview of the neural network predictive control. In Section 4, ponents: Vd and Vq . Neglecting the inverter voltage harmonics, the
the problem statement and the description of the test system is fundamental component of the series injected voltage components
given. In Section 5, the design of the neural network identifier of Vd and Vq are described [17] as:
the power system is presented. Section 6 discusses the algorithm of
the predictive control proposed for the system. Section 7 presents Vd = M1 ∗ Vdc cos ˛1 (1a)
the simulation results demonstrating the superior performance of
the proposed controller over the conventional methods of control. Vq = M1 ∗ Vdc sin ˛1 (1b)
This is followed by conclusions stated in Section 8.
where M1 is the modulation index of the series inverter, given by
2. UPFC: principal operation and control

The UPFC as shown in Fig. 1 consists of two back-to-back voltage Vd 2 + Vq 2
M1 = (2a)
sourced converters (series converter and shunt converter) operated Vdc
 S. Tiwari et al. / Applied Soft Computing 11 (2011) 4581–4590 4583

˛1 is the phase shift between the series inverter output voltage

and the synchronous reference voltage, given by
 
Vd
˛1 = cos −1
 (2b)
Vd 2 + Vq 2

Different real and reactive power flow objectives can be

achieved by controlling Vd and Vq properly. The real and reactive
power flow control objectives are used to realize the PQ decoupled
control strategy [17] for the series inverter. Usually, the amplitudes
of the voltages at buses 1 and 2 in Fig. 1 are approximately equal:
   
V1  = V2  = V (3)

Neglecting inverter losses, the injected real power Pinj , injected

reactive power Qinj , output real power Po and output reactive power
Qo are given by
V (Vq − Vq cos ı + Vd sin ı)
Pinj = (4a)
X
VVd cos ı + VVq sin ı − VVd + Vd 2 + Vq 2
Qinj = (4b)
X
V 2 sin ı + VVq
Po = (5a)
X
2VVd cos ı + 2VVq sin ı + Vd 2 + Vq 2 Fig. 2. (a) PQ decoupled PI control of series converter; and (b) PI control of shunt
Qo = (5b) converter.
2X
In incremental form, the line real and reactive power can be
expressed in terms of Vq and Vd as non-linear plant predictor models will require the use of non-linear
optimization algorithms. For non linear plants, a reasonable model
V of the plant is required as the quality of the model affects the accu-
Po = Vq (6a)
X racy of the prediction. The non linear plants can be modelled either
1 by linearizing the plant about a set of operating points (which can
Qo = (V cos ıVd + V sin ıVq + Vd0 Vd + Vq0 Vq ) (6b)
X be very large for highly non linear plants) or by using methods
In practice, the phase displacement between the sending and based on making assumptions about the dynamics of the non lin-
receiving end buses is typically less than 30◦ [17]. Therefore it is ear plant so as to develop a non linear model of the plant. Neural
reasonably assumed that cosı is close to unity and sinı is close to networks have been proved to possess an inherent capability to
zero, which leads to capture the non linear dynamics of a plant. Therefore, the use of
a neural network to model non-linear plants instead of using the
1 standard modelling techniques will surely enhance the prediction
Qo ≈ (VVd + Vd0 Vd + Vq0 Vq ) (7)
X capability of the GPC. A neural network predictive control (NNPC)
From (6a) and (7), the decoupled PQ control of the PI compen- system is shown in Fig. 3. An input signal r (n) is converted into yr (n)
sated series converter will be as shown in Fig. 2(a). which is fed to the cost function minimization (CFM) block. Tenta-
tive control inputs for specified number of future time instants are
2.2. UPFC shunt branch control first fed to the neural identifier by setting the switch S at position 2
to enable the CFM to use the response from the neural identifier to
The regulation of shunt input voltage, reactive power flow and calculate the next control input. The best control input calculated
the dc link capacitor voltage, Vdc support is achieved by controlling by the CFM is then fed to the plant by setting the switch at position
the shunt current, Is . The shunt current regulation is achieved by 1. The NNPC algorithm is given below:
controlling the voltage E, injected by the shunt converter. Taking
the shunt input voltage V1 as the reference, the shunt current is split (i) Generate a reference trajectory. In case future trajectory of the
in to two components: Isd and Isq . The regulation of the shunt input reference signal is unknown, yr (n) should be kept constant for
voltage and the reactive power flow requirements are controlled future trajectory.
by Isq and the dc link capacitor voltage, Vdc support is provided
by Isd , which in turn, depend on the direct component Ed and the
quadrature component Eq of E, respectively [17]. Fig. 2(b) shows
a typical block diagram of the PI controllers for the shunt branch
control of the UPFC.

3. Neural network predictive control: a brief overview

Generalized predictive control (GPC) is a receding-horizon

method that depends on predicting the plant’s output over several
steps based on assumptions about future control actions [18–20].
It was originally developed with linear plant predictor models [21].
The linear nature of the plant predictor models resulted into for-
mulations that can be solved analytically. However, the use of Fig. 3. Block diagram of the NNPC system.
4584 S. Tiwari et al. / Applied Soft Computing 11 (2011) 4581–4590
(ii) Use the previous calculated control input vector and the neural
identifier to predict the performance of the plant.
(iii) Calculate a new control input vector that minimizes the cost
function.
(iv) Repeat steps (ii) and (iii) till desired minimization is attained.
(v) Provide the first control input from the vector to the plant.
(vi) Repeat steps (ii)–(v) for each time step.
4. Problem statement
Improved transient stability performance of an electric power
system can be achieved by enhancing the damping of the rotor
oscillations. Though the power system stabilizers have been used
for many years to add rotor oscillation damping, but this damp-
ing has been found to be insufficient, especially for interarea
oscillations under some operating conditions [22,23]. Effective
alternatives are therefore required to further enhance this damping
for an improved system performance. Since the rotor oscillations
are the result of real power mismatch, emphasis is on effective
control of real power P so as to improve the transient stability
performance of the system. The unified power flow controller is
the most versatile of all the FACTS devices available for transient
stability enhancement. It can perform a wide range of functions
under different circumstances with its series converter operating
in one of these possible modes: Direct Injection mode, Bus Volt-
age Regulation and Control mode, Impedance Compensation mode,
Phase Angle Regulation mode, Automatic Power Flow Control mode
and its shunt converter operating in either Reactive Power Control
mode or Automatic Voltage Control mode [1]. Additionally, it also
offers the possibility of operating the series and shunt converters
independent of each other, offering standalone series and shunt
compensation. The series converter of the UPFC injects a voltage
of variable magnitude as well as variable phase and can therefore,
control independently both real and reactive power over a broad
range unlike other series connected FACTS controllers. Due to the
numerous advantages offered by the UPFC, the undertaken work
considers the system to be equipped with a UPFC instead of any
other series connected FACTS device.
Since the real power is controlled by the quadrature component
of the series injected voltage (6a), there is a need for an effective
control of the quadrature component Vq of the series injected volt-
age for improving the transient behavior of the system [9,13,15].
Similarly, the in phase component of the series injected voltage can
be controlled to independently regulate the reactive power flow-
ing through the line, if required. Since the primary objective in this
work is to improve the transient stability performance, a neural
network predictive controller is suggested in this paper to provide
a reference for only the quadrature component, Vq of the series volt-
age to be injected by the UPFC. The real power reference is obtained
from the steady state power flow requirements. A non-zero refer-
ence for the direct component, Vd of the series injected voltage is
assumed to be already available to the UPFC.
The shunt converter supports the real power exchange resulting
from the series voltage injection by either supplying or absorbing
the real power as demanded by the series converter at the common
dc link. The voltage of the dc link should be maintained at a constant
value for successful operation of the two converters and for this,
the real power balance between the two converters needs to be
maintained [1,15]. The shunt converter also provides the necessary
voltage support to the connected bus which further enhances the
transient stability performance of the system. In the undertaken
work, the variation of the voltage across the dc link and the voltage
at the connected bus are controlled by using PI controllers.
As the transient stability performance of an electric power
system already equipped with PSSs that damp out small modal
oscillations satisfactorily can further be enhanced whenever
required by using a UPFC, the work undertaken here employs
a UPFC, with its series and shunt converters operating in direct
voltage injection mode and automatic voltage control mode respec-
tively, for this purpose. The problem for the undertaken work can
be stated as given below.
Problem: Use of neural network predictive control for the series
branch of the UPFC to improve the transient stability performance
of a PSS equipped multimachine power system over a wide range
of operating conditions.
4.1. Test system
The system [24] used to investigate the transient performance
of a multi-machine system is shown in Fig. 4(a).
The system under consideration is a two area system with power
flowing from Area 1 to Area 2 and was specifically proposed to
study the low frequency electromechanical oscillations of the large
interconnected power systems. In spite of the small size of this
system, its behavior mimics the behavior of the large power sys-
tems in actual operation. Each area comprises of two 900 MVA
machines and the two areas are connected by a 220 KV double
circuit line of length 220 km. The load voltage profile is improved
by installing additional 187 MVAr capacitors in each area. The sys-
tem under study is equipped with PSS and has a UPFC installed
between the bus 11 and bus 12 with bus 11 common to the shunt
and series converters and the other side of the series converter
connected to bus 12. The system is modelled and simulated using
MATLAB/SIMULINK. The SIMULINK diagram for the test system is
shown in Fig. 4(b).
5. Design of neural plant identifier
The proposed neural network predictive controller employs a
neural network for identifying the non linear test system under
consideration. A two layer neural network with sigmoidal hidden
layer neurons and linear output layer neurons can identify any
system with any degree of accuracy, subject to the availability of
sufficient number of hidden neurons [25]. The use of sigmoidal hid-
den layer neurons enables the neural network to learn the non
linear and linear relationships between the inputs and outputs
while the use of a linear output neuron ensures an unrestricted
output. The neural identifier in Fig. 5(a) that identifies the test sys-
tem (including the UPFC) under consideration uses the values of
the quadrature component of the series injected voltage and the
active output power at two previous instants as inputs to predict
the current value of the active output power. Hence, it is a two-
layer feedforward neural network with 4 inputs, a single hidden
layer with 15 sigmoidal neurons and one linear output neuron. The
data required for training the network is generated from simulation
of the operation of the test system under consideration by applying
Vqr restricted within the range +0.1 pu and −0.1 pu (restricting the
quadrature component of the series injected voltage to 10% of the
nominal line-to-ground voltage) to the plant at regular intervals
of 0.1 s. A section of the random input utilized for this purpose is
shown in Fig. 5(b). The neural network is presented with Vq (t − 1),
Vq (t − 2), Po (t − 1)and Po (t − 2) as inputs to predict Pm . For linear
input neurons, the output of the input neurons is same as the input
given by
T
a04×1 = [ P0 (t − 1) P0 (t − 2) Vq (t − 1) Vq (t − 2) ] (8)
The net input to neuron i in layer 1 (hidden layer) is

4
n1 (i) = w(i, j)a0 (j) + b1 (i) (9)
j=1
 S. Tiwari et al. / Applied Soft Computing 11 (2011) 4581–4590 4585

Fig. 4. (a) Block diagram of the test system; and (b) Simulink diagram of the test system.

The output of the tansigmoidal neuron i of layer 1 will be where, N = size of the training dataset, Poq = desired value of the out-
put of the neural network when qth input is presented, Pmq = actual
a1 (i) = tansig(n1 (i)) (10) output of the neural network when the qth input is presented,
In matrix form, the output of layer 1 (consisting of 15 tan- eq = error for the qth input.
sigmoidal neurons) is given by Since the performance index in (14) is sum of squares of non lin-
ear functions, the numerical optimization techniques for non linear
a115×1 = tansig([W]115×4 a04×1 + b115×1 ) (11) least squares can be used to minimize this objective function [26].
The Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm is said to be more efficient
where, [W ]115×4 = weight matrix between input and hidden layers as compared to other methods for convergence of the Backpropa-
and, b115×1 = bias to the hidden layer neurons. gation algorithm for training a moderate-sized feedforward neural
Similarly, the net input to neuron i of layer 2 (output layer) is network [26,27]. This method is an approximation to the Newton’s
method. The performance index V in (14) is a function of weights

15
and biases, x and can be given by
n2 (i) = w(i, j)a1 (j) + b2 (i) (12)
j=1 
N
V (x) = eq2 (x) (15)
Therefore, the output of layer 2 (consisting of only one linear q=1
neuron) is given in matrix form by
To improve the performance of the neural network, x needs to
Pm = purelin(W21×15 a115×1 + b2 ) (13) be modified during training till the desired performance level is
achieved. For this, the function V(x) is minimized with respect to x
where, W 21×15 = weight vector between hidden and output layers and the update in x as per the Newton’s method [22] would be
and, b2 = bias to the output layer neuron.
−1
The neural network is trained offline using the Backpropaga- x = −[∇ 2 V (x)] ∇ V (x) (16)
tion algorithm through simulation to learn the forward dynamics
where ∇ 2 V(x)
is the Hessian matrix and ∇ V(x) is the gradient of
of the plant. The performance index for the neural network under
V(x).
consideration is
From (13), it can be shown that
1 1
N N
V= (Poq − Pmq )2 = (eq )2 (14) ∇ V (x) = J T (x)e(x) (17)
N N
q=1 q=1 ∇ V (x) = J (x)J(x) + S(x)
2 T
(18)
4586 S. Tiwari et al. / Applied Soft Computing 11 (2011) 4581–4590

Fig. 6. Block diagram of the 2-Area system using NNPC.

and

N
S(x) = eq (x) ∇ 2 eq (x) (20)
q=1

It is assumed for the Gauss–Newton method that S(x) ≈ 0 [27]

and the update (16) becomes
−1 T
x = [J T (x)J(x)] J (x) e(x) (21)

The update in x given by (21) was further modified by adopting

the trust region approach and the modified method is known as
Levenberg–Marquardt method [28]. The update as per this method
is given by
−1 T
x = [J T (x)J(x) +  I] J (x) e(x) (22)

where  is a scalar and I is the identity matrix.

Fig. 5. (a) Structure of the neural network identifier; (b) random input to the plant;
and (c) training of the neural network model of the plant.
The value of  is adaptive in nature and is increased by a factor 
until the change as per (22) results in a reduced performance value.
The change is then made to the network and  is decreased by the
factor . When the value of  is large, this algorithm approaches the
steepest descent method while for small , the algorithm becomes
Gauss Newton. Hence, this method shares with the gradient meth-
ods their ability to converge from an initial guess which may be
outside the region of convergence of other methods and also has
the ability of the Gauss Newton method to converge rapidly after
the vicinity of the converged values has been reached [29].
All the weights and biases for the neural network under
consideration are updated as per (22) during training. The
Backpropagation algorithm employing the Levenberg–Marquardt
algorithm for faster convergence is thus used to train the neural
network as shown in Fig. 5(c) to identify the plant successfully over
a range of operating conditions.

6. Neural network predictive control: the algorithm

where J(x) is the Jacobian matrix
6.1. Cost function formulation
⎡ ⎤
∂e1 (x) ∂e1 (x) ∂e1 (x)
···
⎢ ∂x1 ∂x2 ∂xn⎥ The proposed neural network predictive controller shown in
⎢ ⎥
⎢ ∂e2 (x) ∂e2 (x) ⎥
∂e2 (x) Fig. 6 is based on the receding horizon technique. As the rotor
⎢ ··· ⎥ angle oscillations are the result of real power mismatch, this work
⎢ ∂x1 ∂x2 ∂xn⎥
J(x) = ⎢ ⎥ (19) attempts to control only the real power, P and not the reactive
⎢ .. .. .. . ⎥
⎢ . . .. ⎥ power, Q in order to damp the rotor oscillations. Since the rotor
⎢ . ⎥ oscillations are to be damped by controlling the active power P
⎣ ∂e (x) ∂eN (x) ∂eN (x)
⎦
N
··· effectively to the steady state level, the optimization block of Fig. 6
∂x1 ∂x2 ∂xn minimizes the difference between the actual value of the real power
 S. Tiwari et al. / Applied Soft Computing 11 (2011) 4581–4590 4587

Fig. 7. (a) Interarea mode of oscillations for different control schemes; (b) local mode of oscillations for different control schemes; (c) DC capacitor voltage characteristics
for different control schemes; and (d) voltage profile of Bus11 in the test system.

and its steady state value over some specified future time horizon. 6.2. The cost function minimization algorithm
The optimization block also minimizes the deviation in the control
action making it smooth and ensuring its steady state behavior. A cost function minimization algorithm is used with
The actual value of the active power at future time instants corre- an objective of minimizing C in (23) with respect to
sponding to the tentative control inputs are predicted by the neural [Vq (n + 1) Vq (n + 2) . . . Vq (n + Nu )]T denoted by V q where,
identifier. A cost function employing the integral square error (ISE) (n+1) is the next immediate time instant in future. This is accom-
criterion and consisting of squared deviations between the refer- plished by setting the Jacobian of (23) to zero and solving for V q .
ence and predicted active power values and the weighted square Since the cost function C is a non linear least squares problem, it is
of the change in control input over successive future time instants minimized using the damped Gauss–Newton method [28], which
is formulated as given below: is an optimization technique meant for the non linear squares
problems. This algorithm is actually the Gauss–Newton method
employing a line search. Since the damped Gauss–Newton method

N2
2 always takes descent steps that satisfy the line search criteria, it
C= (Poref (t + j) − Pm (t + j))
is always locally and usually globally convergent on almost all
j=N1
non-linear least squares problems, including large residual or very

Nu non-linear problems [28]. Using this minimization algorithm C
(Vq (t + j − 1) − Vq (t + j − 2))
2 is minimized iteratively, denoted by C(k), to determine the best
+ (23)
V q . An intermediate control input vector is generated for each
j=1
iteration of C(k) and is denoted by

where Pm is given by (13). The active power reference Poref is

T
obtained from the steady-state power flow requirements by sim- V q (k)  [ Vq (n + 1) Vq (n + 2) ... Vq (n + Nu ) ] (24)
ulating the test system in MATLAB/SIMULINK platform and is a
constant reference power trajectory which depends on the speci-
where k = 1, 2,. . . number of iterations.
fied operating conditions. A numerical optimization technique then
The damped Gauss–Newton update rule for V q (k + 1)
uses the predictions of the system identifier to determine the con-
trol input that minimizes the cost function C over the specified 
horizon. Minimization of this cost function results into the genera- ∂C(k)/∂V q
tion of a control input that enables the plant to track the reference V q (k + 1) = V q (k) − k (25)
∂2 C(k)/∂V  q
2
trajectory within some tolerance.
4588 S. Tiwari et al. / Applied Soft Computing 11 (2011) 4581–4590

Fig. 8. (a) Interarea mode of oscillations for different control schemes during prefault conditions; (b) interarea mode of oscillations for different control schemes; (c) local
mode of oscillations for different control schemes; and (d) DC capacitor voltage characteristics for different control schemes during prefault conditions.

where k is selected using Backtracking [28], Jacobian is denoted Sk = Vq (k + 1) − Vq (k) (29)
by
 T The updating of Vq as per (25) continues till the desired min-
∂C(k) ∂C ∂C ∂C imization is attained. Then, the first control input, Vq (n + 1) from
= ... (26)
∂Vq  ∂Vq (n + 1) ∂Vq (n + 2) ∂Vq (n + Nu ) the best determined Vq is provided as the control input Vq (n + 1) to
the plant.
and Hessian is denoted by
⎡ ⎤
∂2 C ∂2 C
··· 7. Simulation results
⎢ ∂Vq (n + 1)2 ∂Vq (n + 1)∂Vq (n + Nu ) ⎥
⎢ ⎥
∂2 C(k) ⎢ .. .. .. ⎥
=⎢ . ⎥ To investigate the performance of the proposed controller, the
∂V  2q ⎢ . . ⎥ multi-machine power system shown in Fig. 4(a) is simulated for
⎣ ∂2 C ∂2 C ⎦
··· three different operating conditions corresponding to three differ-
∂Vq (n + Nu )∂Vq (n + 1) ∂Vq (n + Nu )2 ent levels of real power flowing from Area 1 to Area 2. One of the
(27) transmission line of the double circuit transmission line between
buses 9 and 11 is subjected to a three phase short circuit fault at
6.2.1. Hessian update point A, which is very near to bus 9, for a duration of 200 ms (at
The initial Hessian approximation, H0 in this work is taken as t = 80 s). The fault is cleared by opening the circuit breakers at the
the Identity matrix, i.e. H0 = I. This initial choice of the Hessian two ends of this line, followed by automatic line reclosing while
matrix ensures that it is certainly positive definite and results in working at all the three operating conditions resulting into Case 1,
the first step being in the steepest-descent direction [28]. The sub- Case 2 and Case 3. In Case 4, the system is operated at the same oper-
sequent updates of the Hessian matrix have been made using the ating condition as in Case 3 but is subjected to two three phase short
BFGS update [28] as follows: circuit faults at short interval. These case studies are undertaken to
T
assess the performance of the proposed controller working in coor-
(Sk − (yk /Hk ))STk + Sk (Sk − (yk /Hk )) dination with the PSS as compared to the situation where the same
Hk+1 −1 = Hk −1 +
yTk Sk system is (i) equipped with PSS alone and (ii) employing a PI con-
trolled UPFC in addition to the PSS where the PI controller provides
T
(Sk − (yk /Hk )) yk Sk STk the reference for the quadrature component Vq of the series injected
− (28)
2 voltage. It is tuned manually to reduce the overshoot observed dur-
(yTk Sk )
ing transient in case of the only PSS system and also to minimize
where the steady state error.
 S. Tiwari et al. / Applied Soft Computing 11 (2011) 4581–4590 4589

Case 1: Considering a pre-disturbance operating condition in

pu as P1 = 0.7778, Q1 = 0.0821; P2 = 0.702, Q2 = 0.0731; P3 = 0.8020,
Q3 = 0.0873; P4 = 0.8889, Q4 = 0.0941, the system is subjected to the
said transient. Fig. 7(a) and (b) shows the interarea and local mode
of oscillations and provide a comparison between the different
control schemes considered in this work. The interarea oscilla-
tions between the different machines follow the same trend as
shown in Fig. 7(a). Though the rise time and settling time for
the PI-controlled UPFC and the proposed NNPC based system are
comparable, the overshoot is comparatively less in case of the pro-
posed controller. Even in case of the PI-controlled UPFC system,
the maximum overshoot of interarea oscillations is reduced by
more than 20% as compared to the only PSS system. This estab-
lishes a significant improvement in the performance of the system
on equipping it with a UPFC in addition to the PSS. The successful
operation of the series and shunt converters of UPFC depends on
the dc capacitor voltage which needs to be maintained at the rated Fig. 9. Interarea mode of oscillations for different control schemes.
value. This regulation is achieved by a simple PI controller in the
dc voltage loop. The variation in the dc capacitor voltage for the
two series injected control schemes used at this operating point is used for the system subjected to the double three phase fault as it
found to be well within limits as shown in Fig. 7(c). The use of the already failed in case 3. The dc capacitor voltage oscillation is also
shunt converter in the automatic voltage control mode improves within the limit as shown in Fig. 10(b).
the voltage profile of Bus 11 during the transient condition as In all the above 4 cases, the cost function minimization algo-
shown in Fig. 7(d). rithm in the proposed controller converges to acceptable solutions
Case 2: The operating condition of the system is changed in single iteration per sample time. The fast convergence of the
to P1 = 0.9911, Q1 = 0.5469; P2 = 0.4584, Q2 = 0.8772; P3 = 0.06111, adopted algorithm makes the proposed neural network predic-
Q3 = 0.2312; P4 = 0.7778, Q4 = 0.6359. However, the system can not tive controller a viable option for real-time implementation [18].
operate at this operating condition if it is equipped with only PSS Moreover, the off-line trained neural identifier has been employed
as can be observed from Fig. 8(a). The introduction of UPFC in the successfully throughout, avoiding the additional computational
system reinforces the only PSS system and makes this operating burden of updating its parameters continuously on-line.
condition feasible. The system is then subjected to the same tran-
sient. Fig. 8(b) and (c) clearly show degradation in the performance
of the PI-controlled UPFC as compared to the proposed controller
with a change in the operating condition. The overshoot in case of
the PI-controlled UPFC system exceeds the overshoot in case of the
proposed controller by more than 40%. Similarly, the settling time
for the PI-controlled UPFC system is more than 35% longer than
the settling time for the system using the proposed controller. The
dc voltage regulation during the initial stages of operation of the
system while it is being stabilized by the UPFC is found to be satis-
factory for the proposed controller as shown in Fig. 8(d). When the
system is subjected to the transient, the variation in the dc capac-
itor voltage for the two series injected control schemes follow the
same trend as observed in case 1.
Case 3: The operating condition is changed to P1 = 0.9911,
Q1 = 0.4634; P2 = 0.6382, Q2 = 0.7005; P3 = 0.008388, Q3 = 0.1566;
P4 = 0.8889, Q4 = 0.456. As in case 2, the system under consideration
is able to operate at this condition only when a UPFC is introduced
in addition to the PSS. However, when the system is subjected
to the same transient, the PI-controlled UPFC fails to stabilize the
system as shown in Fig. 9. On the other hand, the proposed neu-
ral network predictive controller damps out the oscillations and
restores the system stability. This brings forth the inability of the
PI controllers to work satisfactorily over a wide range of operating
conditions. The dc voltage regulation in this case is also found to be
satisfactory.
Case 4: The system is operated at the same operating condition
as in case 3 but subjected to two three phase short circuit faults at
point A, first one of duration 200 ms at t = 80 s and then a second one
of duration 200 ms at t = 81.2 s. As shown in Fig. 10(a), the proposed
controller is successfully damping out the oscillations and the sys-
tem is stable even after the double faults. Similar results were
observed for the interarea and local mode of oscillations between
the remaining machines. This further establishes the effectiveness
of the proposed neural network predictive controller in enhancing Fig. 10. (a) Interarea mode of oscillations; and (b) DC capacitor voltage character-
the transient stability of the system. PI-controlled UPFC was not istic.
4590 S. Tiwari et al. / Applied Soft Computing 11 (2011) 4581–4590
8. Conclusion
Neural network predictive control for the series converter of
UPFC is proposed in this work. The performance of the proposed
controller is then investigated in a benchmark multimachine sys-
tem subjected to transients at different operating points. This
controller damps the interarea and local modes of oscillation in
the system very effectively in all the cases under consideration
as compared to the conventional PI controller and performs sat-
isfactorily even at those operating points where the PI controller
fails to stabilize the system. The proposed neural network pre-
dictive controller hence, provides a significant improvement in
the transient stability performance of the system over a wide
range of operating conditions. It is also established that the use
of UPFC supports the PSS equipped system further, and makes the
operation of the system possible even at those operating points
which are otherwise not feasible in an only PSS system. The
use of the off-line trained neural identifier to identify the plant
over a range of operating conditions, thereby saving the other-
wise required computational time for continuous updating of the
parameters of the neural identifier, along with an effective mini-
mization algorithm employed by the predictive controller, imparts
the proposed controller a potential for use in intelligent control of
future grids.
Appendix A. Appendix
PSS data Sensor time Gain = 30
constant = 15 ms
UPFC ratings Series Shunt
converter = 160 MVA converter = 160 MVA
Vdcbase = 40 kV Cdc = 750 ␮F
Neural identifier Initial  = 0.001  = 10
Neural network predictive N1 = 1 N2 = 5 Nu = 2
controller data
Control weighting factor,
 = 0.01
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