IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 17, NO.
3, AUGUST 2002
Implementation of an ACE1 Decomposition Method
Naeb-boon Hoonchareon, Member, IEEE, Chee-Mun Ong, Senior Member, IEEE, and
Robert A. Kramer, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Having established feasibility and developed a
method to decompose control area’s 1 into components
attributable to load changes in subareas within the control area,
this paper addresses some of the practical issues with an on-line
implementation of the 1 model and the decomposition
method. Issues examined here include time-varying system condi-
tions, nonlinearities in the governors’ dead bands and AGC loop,
and the impact of load disturbance external to the control area. An
on-line recursive parameter estimation technique with adjustable
forgetting factor to update the 1 model parameters is
proposed.
Index Terms—Area control error (ACE), ancillary services,
regulation.
I. BACKGROUND
A CONTROL area with rapid and widely varying loads not
only incurs substantial costs in providing the necessary
regulation [1], but also the risk of penalty associated with vi-
olation of CPS1 and CPS2 [8]. A method to quantify the impact
of certain loads on an area’s control performance in terms of
CPS1 and CPS2 would help identify responsibility in the event
where the control area is not in compliance with the control per-
formance standards (CPS) measures, especially when a penalty
is involved. Potentially, the method could be useful to pricing re-
lated ancillary services, and also in AGC design to optimize the
control area’s operational efficiency and control performance.
In the companion paper [2], we examine the feasibility of de-
composing the 1-min average value of area control error (ACE),
, of a control area into components, each attributable to
load changes in subareas or zones within the control area; de-
scribe a reduced-order model of ; and devise an algorithm
to decompose into components identifiable to each of
the defined zones. The decomposed components of may
then be used to quantify the impacts of load disturbances in the
corresponding zones on the , CPS1, and CPS2. A dy-
namic simulation of the 5-area test system shown in Fig. 1 is
constructed to facilitate the development and testing of the ACE
model and the decomposition method.
A practical implementation of the method to decompose
should at the least consider the time-varying nature of
the system operating condition, nonlinearities within the AGC
and governor responses, and impact of external disturbances.
Manuscript received March 15, 2000; revised Novemer 5, 2001. This work
was supported by the Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO).
N. Hoonchareon is with the Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Chulalongkorn
University, Bangkok, Thailand.
C.-M. Ong is with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Purdue
University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 USA.
R. A. Kramer is with NiSource Energy Technologies, Merrillville, IN 46410
USA.
Publisher Item Identifier 10.1109/TPWRS.2002.801035.
0885-8950/02$17.00 © 2002 IEEE
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757
Fig. 1. Test system with five interconnected control areas.
For in reality, the system operating condition will be continu-
ally varying, and our knowledge of the actual condition is at
best partial. Within the AGC and speed governing loops are
various kinds of nonlinearities, such as limits and dead bands.
Moreover, in advanced AGC schemes, sophisticated logics
are used to distribute the control effort amongst the regulating
units. All of these point to the need to estimate the parameters
of the ACE models on-line.
When the area’s bias coefficient 10 is set to its fre-
quency response characteristic , the impact of any external
disturbances on the internal area’s ACE is supposedly small.
Estimating the value of on a real-time basis is challenging
[3], because of the complex relationship it has with governor
nonlinearities and load characteristics. In any case, with fixed
bias coefficient, the impact on ACE from external disturbances
should not be ignored. Thus, the impact of external disturbances
on the proposed decomposition method has to be studied.
In this paper, we will address practical issues likely to be en-
countered in the implementation of the decomposition
method. First, we establish the robustness of the model
to a range of values of the AGC/LFC loop gains, synchronizing
torque coefficients, and areas’ frequency response characteris-
tics. Next, we describe an on-line estimation technique for up-
dating the model parameters under time-varying system
conditions. Results showing the tracking capability and noise
sensitivity of the estimation technique and the efficiency of the
combination of model with adaptive parameter identifi-
cation are presented. Finally, we examine the impact of external
disturbances on the same combination.
II. ROBUSTNESS OF THE MODEL
We begin by first assessing the robustness of the
model in portraying the actual of a control area over
a range of system conditions in the absence of nonlinearities.
Specifically, the performance of the model is examined
over the following ranges of parameters:
1) effective AGC/LFC loop gain: ;
 758 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 17, NO. 3, AUGUST 2002

TABLE I
RMS ERROR (MW) WITH NO EXTERNAL DISTURBANCES

2) synchronizing torque coefficients: ;

3) area’s frequency response characteristics:
10 ;
where , , and 10 are the nominal values. An AGC/LFC
effective gain of yields approximately 1-min time
constant in the AGC/LFC response. The nominal values of the
Fig. 2. Estimated ACE model parameters under fixed system condition.
bias coefficients 10 for the five control areas are based on
the present rule of thumb of 1% of the peak demand published
by the control areas.
(2)
The test loads applied within the zones 2 and 3 are uncorre-
lated arc furnace loads with temporal fluctuation up to 200 MW
load change within a period of less than 1 min. Zone 1 has a where and are updated at every time step when fresh
conforming load, consisting of a ramp component and a random values of become available. Past information are deem-
variation component. phasized by introducing an exponential weight, or forgetting
Table I summarizes the results of a number of simulation factor , where .
studies. The root mean square (rms) error measure used is the Initial values of and can be conveniently set, that is,
rms of the differences between the actual and the mod- and , where is some large constant [5].
eled , over a 2-h interval of operation. It should be clar-
ified that the term actual here refers to the ob- B. Updating and
tained directly from the SIMULINK simulation of the intercon-
nected system, standing in for the real system. The term modeled Rewriting the model equation given in [2] into the
refers to the computed from the average model form of (2), we have
equation described in the companion paper [2].
The rms error is less than 1 MW in most cases with the worst
rms error under 3 MW. Moreover, the results reveal that the (3)
ability to portray is better in cases where the AGC/LFC
gain and the synchronizing torque coefficients are high, and the where and refer to time steps at the beginning and at
value of area’s bias coefficient is close to the value of area’s fre- the end, respectively, of the th 1-min interval.
quency response characteristics. The accuracy of the modeled Here, the vector is being updated every two
is also somewhat sensitive to dynamic response and par- seconds when new data on the area’s ACE and total load change
ticipating factor of the regulating units. On the whole, the num- become available.
bers in Table I indicate that the model performs well over
the range of the system conditions tested. C. Test Results
On-line estimates of the model parameters are com-
III. ON-LINE ESTIMATION OF THE MODEL PARAMETERS puted from sampling the dynamic simulation every two sec-
The model parameters and are inversely propor- onds. The values of and obtained on-line are verified by
tional to the effective AGC/LFC loop gain which is a function of comparing them with corresponding values obtained from an
the AGC control parameters, the range, and participation factor off-line least square computation.
of the regulating units. For changing operating conditions, the Fig. 2 shows the and in a case where the system condi-
values of and can be updated using a recursive least square tion is not time-varying. Despite the random and rapid changes
(RLS) technique with exponential weights. in the area’s ACE and load, the algorithm performed stably, with
the estimated parameters converging quickly to their respective
A. Recursive Least Square (RLS) Method expected values.
The RLS algorithm for updating and of the ACE model Fig. 3 shows the tracking ability of the method to follow a
can be written as step up and a step down of the AGC gain . Step changes in
AGC gain are used in this test because the correctness of the es-
(1) timated and can be readily verified by formula. The results
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 HOONCHAREON et al.: IMPLEMENTATION OF AN DECOMPOSITION METHOD 759

Fig. 3. Tracking capability of the RLS method. Fig. 4. Model performance with 30-MHz governor dead bands included.

demonstrate the ability of the procedure to correctly estimate the

values of and in response to such changes in AGC gain.
The value of the forgetting factor can be adjusted to achieve
a tradeoff between tracking ability and noise sensitivity. A larger
gives better performance in terms of noise sensitivity but
poorer tracking ability, the opposite is true when is smaller.
The test results presented are obtained with . The value
of forgetting factor to use will depend on the real system dy-
namics. The need to employ an adaptive forgetting factor will
be determined from actual experimentation of the method in the
field.

IV. NONLINEARITIES OF THE AGC

The AGC system has various nonlinearities, both within its
control logic and in the generating units. Here, we will examine
the impact of each of the following nonlinearities on the perfor- Fig. 5. Model performance with unit range limits included.
mance of the decomposition method:
1) 5 MW ACE dead bands in the AGC/LFC control logic
of the five control areas;
2) 30-MHz speed governor dead bands on all of the units;
3) rate and range limits of units under AGC control in control
area 1.
The dynamics of the 30-MHz governor dead band is imple-
mented using the backlash representation given in [6]. A unit’s
rate and range limits are incorporated into the models of gov-
ernor and prime mover of the generating unit, as described in
[7].
Our study revealed that the inclusion of the 5 MW ACE
dead bands or the unit rate limits alone on the AGC system has
no significant impact on the accuracy of the modeled and
on the dynamics of the model parameters and . However,
governor dead bands and unit range limits may have significant
effects. Fig. 6. Response to AGC command of regulating units with range limits: unit
Fig. 4 shows the estimated and , and the corresponding 6 6
REG1: 40 MW and unit REG2: 30 MW from baseload operating points.

differences between the actual and the modeled

with just governor dead bands included in the system simu- governor dead bands. The limits on the output response of two
lation. The effect of governor dead bands is observed to be of the units are evident from Fig. 6. Larger errors occur when-
small when the frequency deviation is well within the dead band. ever the regulating units are driven against their range limits be-
Fig. 5 shows the results obtained from a similar run with non- cause of the drop in effective AGC/LFC loop gain. The
linearities from limits imposed on the units’ range instead of model parameters have a reciprocal relation with that effective
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 760
Fig. 7. Actual ACE and modeled ACE under combined nonlinearities.
Fig. 8. Difference between the two curves given in Fig. 7.
Fig. 9. Clock-minute compliance factor under combined nonlinearities.
loop gain. In such situations, we observed that the use of a con-
stant forgetting factor in the RLS could not provide acceptable
tracking ability and noise sensitivity.
Fig. 7 shows the actual and the modeled for
the case where all of the above-mentioned nonlinearities are
present. To facilitate a comparison, the difference between the
two curves of Fig. 7 is shown in Fig. 8. Fig. 9 shows the cor-
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER SYSTEMS, VOL. 17, NO. 3, AUGUST 2002
TABLE II
RMS ERROR (MW) WITH EXTERNAL DISTURBANCES
responding clock-minute compliance factors of
CPS1 for the same case, as computed using the actual and mod-
eled values of . These results indicate that the decompo-
sition method functions reasonably well in the presence of the
above-mentioned types of nonlinearities.
Many of today’s AGC systems may be equipped with com-
plex control algorithms, including adjustable ACE dead band,
adjustable rate, and range limits. The feasibility of incorporating
the decomposition technique into such AGC systems will have
to be examined on a case-by-case basis.
V. IMPACT OF EXTERNAL DISTURBANCES
To determine the sensitivity of the control area’s ACE to ex-
ternal load disturbances and its impact on the decomposition
technique, sizable random load variations are simultaneously
applied to control areas 2–5 in Fig. 1. The load in control area 1
remains the same as described earlier.
Table II presents the rms errors of the modeled for
various system conditions previously shown in Table I; but this
time, with load disturbances also applied in the external areas.
A comparison of the results given in Tables I and II will
show that when , the accuracy of the modeled
is only slightly affected by external load disturbances.
This observation agrees with the theory that external load
disturbances should not affect the ACE of a control area when
its frequency bias coefficient is set equal to its frequency
response characteristic.
Second, the larger the difference between the area’s 10
and , the larger the impact of external disturbances on the local
ACE and on the accuracy of the modeled . This is also
evident from the differential equation governing the behavior
of ACE given in the companion paper [2]. When the difference
is large, the influence of frequency error on ACE
becomes significant.
Although control area 1 has fairly strong ties with its external
areas and the external load disturbances applied are sizable, the
impact of the external disturbances on its ACE and the decom-
position algorithm is not large. The rms errors of all of the cases
studied are small. This is due, in part, to the fact that the differ-
ence of control area 1 is small relative to similar dif-
ferences of the neighboring areas. Had it not been the case, the
impact of external disturbances would be larger. A large differ-
ence between the frequency bias setting and the actual value of
the frequency response characteristic is not uncommon in prac-
tice, especially when 10 is determined as some fraction of
peak demand and when the effective value of the frequency re-
 HOONCHAREON et al.: IMPLEMENTATION OF AN DECOMPOSITION METHOD
Fig. 10. Root mean square of sliding m-minute average frequency error
obtained from the simulation.
sponse characteristic is lower than the theoretical value because
a significant number of the governors are operating well within
their dead bands.
If the area’s frequency response characteristic could be es-
timated, e.g., by some on-line estimation method, then setting
10 to the estimated would lessen the area’s AGC reaction
to external load disturbances. In doing so, the cost of over-reg-
ulation and extraneous fluctuations in frequency and ACE may
also be reduced. A control policy that requires monitoring and
control of the frequency response characteristic of each control
area would ensure a fairer distribution of the control responsi-
bility among the control areas. Indeed, in the most recent version
of NERC Policy 1 [8], NERC is recommending that a control
area sets its frequency bias as close as practical to the area’s
frequency response characteristic.
VI. DISCUSSION
Although the results presented were obtained from simula-
tion, the similarity of the system frequency dynamics in the sim-
ulated system to those experienced in the real system may pro-
vide another check on the validity of the result presented. Fig. 10
shows the plots of the rms of the sliding average frequency er-
rors from our simulations. The shape of these curves is not un-
like measured frequency characteristic curves used in determi-
nations of the relevant targeted bound in the NERC’s CPS: in
the CPS1 and in the CPS2 [9]. Of the two curves, the one
with nonlinearities is slightly flatter for average time windows
greater than 10 s. This agrees with previous observations by
others that the problem with inadvertent energy exchange over
longer periods is accentuated by the effects of nonlinearities.
To follow up, we are planning to conduct a field implemen-
tation and testing of these methods, and developing a method
to perform on-line estimation of the area’s frequency response
characteristic.
VII. CONCLUSIONS
This paper examines the issues related to the implementation
of a method to decompose to components identifiable
with changes in loads in subareas of the control area. Acceptable
performance of the decomposition technique over a wide range
of system conditions is demonstrated. Our results show that the
accuracy of the decomposition is affected to varying degrees
by the effective AGC/LFC gains, the area’s frequency response
characteristics, the tie strength, the dynamic response of units,
and outside load disturbances.
Also presented is a RLS algorithm to update the
model parameters for purposes of handling changing and
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761
nonlinear system conditions. Test results showed good conver-
gence, tracking ability, and noise sensitivity. The accuracy of
the decomposition method with adaptive parameter identifica-
tion is less affected by ACE dead bands and units’ rate limits,
but more so by governor dead bands and units’ range limits.
Finally, the impact of external disturbances on implementa-
tion of the decomposition technique is found to be negligible
when the difference between the area’s and 10 is small
and/or when system frequency deviates within a narrow range.
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Naeb-boon Hoonchareon (M’01) received the B.Eng. (Hons) degree in elec-
trical engineering from Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand, in 1993,
and the M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. degrees from Purdue University, West Lafayette,
IN, in 1996 and 2000, respectively.
Dr. Hoonchareon is now with the Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Chula-
longkorn University. His research interests include interconnected power sys-
tems operation, modern automatic control, and optimization.
Chee-Mun Ong (S’73–M’74–SM’80) received the B.E. (Hons) degree in elec-
trical engineering from the University of Malaysia in 1967, and the M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, in 1968 and 1974,
respectively.
During the periods 1968–1973 and 1976–1978, he was a Lecturer at the Uni-
versity of Malaya. In 1969 and 1970, he was a UNESCO Fellow with the Central
Electricity Generating Board and the English Electric in the U.K. In 1978, he
joined the School of Electrical Engineering, Purdue University, first as an As-
sistant Professor, and then in 1985, as a Professor. His interests are in power
systems and electrical drives.
Dr. Ong is a Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and a registered
Professional Engineer of Indiana.
Robert A. Kramer (M’85–SM’91) received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in
physics, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in nuclear engineering, all from
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN.
Currently, he is Manager of Technical Support at Northern Indiana Public
Service Company (NIPSCO), Merrillville, IN, where he is responsible for the
introduction of new technology into the gas and electric functions of the utility,
as well as providing support on various technical and competitive issues.