Energy Reports 7 (2021) 8030–8041

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Energy Reports
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/egyr

Coordinated intelligent frequency control incorporating battery

energy storage system, minimum variable contribution of demand
response, and variable load damping coefficient in isolated power
systems
∗ ∗∗
Amer Al-Hinai a,b , , Hajer Alyammahi c , Hassan Haes Alhelou a,b ,
a
Sustainable Energy Research Center, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman
b
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman
c
Electrical and Computer Science Department, Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

article info a b s t r a c t

Article history: Maintaining a generation-demand balance becomes more challenging nowadays due to the limited
Received 16 May 2021 availability of traditional automatic generation control (AGC) and spinning reserves. In response
Received in revised form 12 July 2021 to this concern, the purpose of the proposed paper is to bridge the gap by introducing battery
Accepted 26 July 2021
energy storage system (BESS) control loop in the load frequency control (LFC) system. Furthermore,
Available online 9 August 2021
a minimum variable share of demand response (DR) is utilized as an additional mean to regulate the
Keywords: system frequency. The growing intermittency of controllable loads calls the awareness to incorporate
Load frequency control frequency-sensitive loads by considering a variable load-damping coefficient in LFC problem. The
Demand response presented control scheme demonstrates a stable power operation with the optimal sharing of BESS,
Frequency-sensitive load dynamic DR, and the supplementary control loop. Moreover, because of the continuous and sudden
Load-damping coefficient variations in the demand, adaptive LFC controller is designed using fuzzy logic based on particle swarm
Battery energy storage system optimization (PSO) tuning method. The proposed controller ensures a stable and robust frequency
Particle swarm optimization
regulation of the system under load fluctuations. In this paper it is revealed that adding the BESS
Fuzzy logic control
control loop is very effective in enhancing the performance of LFC as it can deliver fast power
compensation. The obtained results prove the capability and effectiveness of the proposed method
in an isolated power system.
© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction fluctuations in the demand-side due to the stochastic behav-

The balance services that keep the generation equal to the
demand in real time are of significant importance to operate
power systems stably, reliably, and securely. Traditionally, this
balance is attained by controlling the amount of active-power
generation, and ancillary services including both spinning and
non-spinning reserves. With the increase the share of renewable
energy resources (RERs), more primary and secondary active-
power reserves are required in the future in order to mitigate
the impacts of the high fluctuations in generation and demand
sides. Unlike conventional power systems, future smart grids
would receive fluctuations from generation-side due to intermit-
tency in renewable energy sources in addition to the traditional
∗ Corresponding author at: Electrical and Computer Engineering Department,
Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman.
∗∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: hinai@squ.edu.om (A. Al-Hinai), h.alhelou@squ.edu.om
(H. Haes Alhelou).
ior of consumers (Tungadio and Sun, 2019). This fact would
lead to additional costs and extra pollution, affiliated with the
required reserve from traditional power plants (Anon., 2006).
Thus, Demand Response (DR) and storage devices are considered
to be alternatives to the conventional reserves to maintain the
generation-load balance and sustain the system reliability in the
case of sudden disturbances.
In conventional power systems, the frequency is controlled by
services called ancillary services usually provided by generation-
side. There are three level of controllers, i.e. primary, secondary,
and tertiary control loops, where they are associated with pri-
mary, secondary and tertiary reserves, respectively. It is clear that
consumers do not participate in providing frequency control and
regulation services. In fact, they can contribute to frequency pro-
tection schemes by under frequency load shedding (UFLS) service
which is activated under contingency situations only. Considering
the fact that the demand-side is more flexible in comparison with
generation-side, therefore the responsive loads can participate in
real — time to provide ancillary services and to instantaneously

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egyr.2021.07.072
2352-4847/© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc-nd/4.0/).
A. Al-Hinai, H. Alyammahi and H. Haes Alhelou
respond to the area control error (ACE) signal (Mahto et al.,
2021). Electric water heaters (EWHs) are considerable candidates
for the dynamic demand response as they can storage their hot
water for a long time (Heffner et al., 2006; Hohne et al., 2019),
which will presumably maintain the consumers’ quality of service
(QoS). In particular, all the smart appliances that storage their
energy thermally can be considered in demand side programs
including demand response services because their participation
in demand response do not affect the comfort of consumers. For
instance, appliances such as AC air-conditioners, water heaters,
and refrigerators are the most suitable electric smart devices that
can be considered for future smart demand response programs.
However, the main challenge in the implementation of demand
response in real-word power systems is the need for a special
infrastructure of information and communication technologies
(ICTs).
Nowadays, the need for integrating energy storages is essential
for modern power systems in order to deal with the negative
effects of renewables on the safe operation of such systems.
With the increase of the renewable shares in modern power
systems, the magnitude of frequency fluctuations has been highly
increased where the operator would need a faster and more
suitable reserves in order to maintain the frequency. A such fast
reserve cannot be delivered from conventional power plants due
to the dynamic and mechanical limitations such as ramp-rate
constrains (Jia et al., 2007). Therefore, the most suitable solution
is to harvest such a reserve from demand response and energy
storage systems, however there is economic limitations regarding
the deployment of energy storage systems while the demand
response remains as the best choice. In the case of a serious load
disturbance or a loss of a generation unit, the system perfor-
mance would be influenced, which could possibly lead to a critical
condition. Hence, incorporating demand response and partially
energy storage devices enhances the system performance and
stability by activating and releasing energy from demand side
at an appropriate time. The main backup energy storage devices
are battery energy storage system (BESS), pumped hydro storage
(PSH), and compressed air energy storage (CAES) (Aghajani and
Ghadimi, 2018).
During the last decade, conventional system frequency re-
sponse (SFR) models have been modified to integrate various
types of emerging power generation units including distributed
generating (DG) units-based dispatchable and non-dispatchable
renewable energy sources (Dong-Jing and Li, 2008; Ibraheem
and Kothari, 2005), and storage devices such as flywheel energy
storage systems, and BESS (Li et al., 2005). In additions to de-
velopments in SFR models, the concept of the control has only
focused on the generation units and their AGC services, while
demand side management has not been included thoroughly in
the impactful studies. Among the few works, the references Liao
et al. (2015), Huang and Li (2013) and Omara and Bouffard (2009)
have examined the effect of load-damping coefficient on the
frequency response in power systems (Liao et al., 2015; Huang
and Li, 2013; Omara and Bouffard, 2009). However, the load-
damping coefficient is expressed as a constant in most studies,
where in fact, it is a variable factor when frequency-sensitive
loads are controlled. The most recent contribution in the LFC
problem is considering DR control loop into the conventional
LFC model which was reported in Mahto et al. (2021). However,
the proposed LFC-DR model does not ensure consumers’ QoS by
utilizing a fixed amount from DR and it only considers purely
resistive loads. In addition, it does not consider the effect of DR
in the face of multiple load disturbances in which the adaptive
controller is required. Considerable attention has been devoted
for more than a quarter of a century to consider adaptive control
schemes in power systems (Kanniah et al., 1984; Ross, 1966;
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Energy Reports 7 (2021) 8030–8041
Pan and Liaw, 1989; Vajk et al., 1985; Alquthami et al., 2020).
Basically, the objective of having adaptive control in LFC is to
increase the system robustness and make it less sensitive to the
sudden variations. For the above reason, a number of studies
have addressed the adaptive controller for modern power sys-
tems (Yousef et al., 2014; Srinivasa, 2012; Zhan et al., 2009;
Al-Omari and Al-Hinai, 2007) as well as for islanded microgrids
with penetrating renewable energy sources (Al-Omari and Al-
Hinai, 2007; Yufei et al., 2014). It is clear that the aforementioned
studies have suggested incorporating demand response or energy
storages separately and have not suggested control schemes that
can be adopted in reality which can be considered as real research
gaps that need to be considered in future researches.
This paper proposes a novel optimal coordination of load
frequency control schemes. The proposed scheme utilizes both
BESS and DR in order to minimize the mechanical and thermal
stresses on the conventional generation units, meaning that with
the deployment of the proposed DR and BESS the frequency
can be regulated smoothly. Moreover, it aims to stabilize the
system frequency by controlling the load-damping coefficient in
LFC problem. An adaptive proportional–integral controller is also
designed to guarantee the desired performance under sudden
disturbances which can help stabilizing the grid under critical
conditions. The proposed control method is applied to a large-
scale bulk power system. Simulation results prove the effective-
ness of the proposed control scheme. The main contributions of
the proposed control scheme are highlighted as follows:
• The suggestion and implantation of the minimum variable
participation of DR control scheme.
• The consideration of several and multiple step of load dis-
turbances in the designed scheme.
• The proposal and utilization of a variable load-damping
coefficient.
• The evaluation of different share allocation of BESS contri-
bution in LFC.
• The proposal of the optimal share allocation among DR,
BESS, and the supplementary control.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes and
evaluates the concept of the developed SFR model while in-
corporating BESS and minimum share of DR with an optimal
share allocation scheme. The controller design of load frequency
control scheme is explained in Section 3. The simulation results
of different scenarios are presented and discussed in Section 4,
while Section 5 concludes.
2. Proposed methodology and formulation
2.1. LFC-DR-BESS model
The spinning reserves from conventional sources have sev-
eral constraints and dynamic limitations including the minimum
up/down-time, ramp up/down rate limits, and other mechan-
ical and dynamic generation constraints (Bevrani, 2009; Kun-
dur, 1994). Hence, the system frequency response (SFR) model
in (Bevrani, 2009) is modified to include the variable
load-damping coefficient where frequency-sensitive loads can be
considered as controlled loads as shown in Fig. 1. Furthermore,
the minimum variable participation of DR and BESS control loop
are included in the secondary frequency control loop. Thus, the
main objective of the suggested model, called LFC-DR-BESS, is
to minimize the amount of controlled loads besides minimizing
the dependency on the supplementary control. The designed
DR control methodology starts with high variations in load that
drop with time. Accordingly, consumers’ QoS is enhanced and a
higher amount of consumer loads is obtainable for future control,
A. Al-Hinai, H. Alyammahi and H. Haes Alhelou
Fig. 1. Block-diagram of the SFR model proposed for LFC-DR-BESS control loops.
if required. By adding BESS control loop to the traditional SFR
model, the system reliability would be increased since BESS can
deliver fast power compensation. Moreover, the dependency on
the supplementary control will decrease which means that the
mechanical and thermal stresses on the generation units will be
highly reduced, and that result in increasing the lifetime of those
equipment.
Similar to spinning reserves, DR and BESS provide ancillary
services with a specified magnitude and power flow direction.
When the frequency deviation is positive, a certain amount of
the responsive loads (that are OFF) will be turned ON, whereas
BESS will start charging, meaning that the demand side will
absorb the surplus active power led to increasing the frequency
above its nominal value. On the other hand, once the frequency
deviation is negative, it is required to turn OFF a certain amount
of the responsive loads while BESS will switch to discharging
mode (Tungadio and Sun, 2019). Therefore, the power balance
equation in frequency domain (including variable load-damping
coefficient, DR and BESS) can be expressed as (Mahto et al., 2021;
Kundur, 1994):
∆PT (s)−∆PL (s)+∆PDR (s)+∆PBESS (s) = 2H ·s·∆f (s)+(D+∆D)∆f (s)
(1)
where, ∆PT (s) – ∆PL (s) is incremental power mismatch; ∆PDR
(s) is the change in DR (∆PDR > 0 when ∆f > 0, and the reverse is
true); ∆PBESS (s) is the change in contribution of BESS (∆PBESS > 0
when the battery is in discharging mode, and the reverse is true);
H is system inertia constant; s is Laplace transform operator;
∆f (s) is frequency deviation; and (D + ∆D) is the change in
load-damping coefficient.
The block-diagram shown in Fig. 1 presents a well-known
system frequency response (SFR) model which is suitable for de-
signing frequency controllers and testing them in power systems.
The demand in power system comprises several types of devices.
For purely resistive loads, the change in the frequency does not
affect the consumed active power. In contrast, inductive loads,
e.g. electric machines, are sensitive to changes in the system
frequency. Therefore, the change in electrical power consists from
the frequency dependent and independent loads (∆PDR + D∆f ).
The developed LFC-DR-BESS model is depicted in Fig. 1 where
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Energy Reports 7 (2021) 8030–8041
Tg , Tt , TBESS are the time constants of the governor, turbine, and
BESS, respectively. R is the droop coefficient of the governor and
Td is the DR communication delay. The participation coefficients
of DR, BESS, and the supplementary control are: α DR , α BESS , and
α Supp ., respectively. Later in the coming subsection, the optimal
share (participation) allocation scheme will be described in more
details.
DR resources can be adjusted instantaneously by the received
command signal from the aggregator or operator considering a
prescheduling based on ancillary services market. Therefore, the
only delay that should be considered when dealing with DR is
the communication delay, often known as latency that affects the
system dynamic performance (Mahto et al., 2021). It is worth
mentioning that DR type that considered in this research work
includes the direct control loads. In addition, the practical imple-
mentation of BESS is not always ideal. The following limitations
have to be taken into consideration (Teleke et al., 2010):
(1) State of Charge (SOC): The SOC is the available capacity of
the battery given as a percentage of its rated value.
(2) Deep Discharge: Battery lifetime decreases by increasing the
Depth of Discharge (DOD). Most cell chemistries cannot sustain
the deep discharge and possibly they will damage in the case
of fully discharged. Hence, in order to increase the lifetime of a
battery, the maximum discharge current of the battery should be
limited.
(3) The Economic Cost of BESS.
In this paper, the impact of SOC and DOD is investigated in the
results section. It is also worth mentioning that the main focus of
this research work is on the frequency control in power systems
as viewed from the control center. Therefore, the lifecycle of BESS
is not a concern to the operator of the system as the power
system stability and security issue receives the higher importance
in the control center. The lifecycle of BESS is considered to be
main concern in the planning and operation of such storage
devices.
2.2. Optimal share allocation of load damping, DR, BESS, and sup-
plementary control in frequency regulation
It has been verified in Huang and Li (2013) that having a
variable load-damping coefficient in SFR model would increase
A. Al-Hinai, H. Alyammahi and H. Haes Alhelou Energy Reports 7 (2021) 8030–8041

Fig. 2. Frequency deviation under different load damping coefficient values.

Fig. 3. Frequency deviation under different DR contribution.

the accuracy of the model as it has a great impact on frequency
response. Based on various simulations and experiments, load-
damping coefficient has been varied under load disturbance of
0.01 p.u. As shown in Fig. 2, with higher contribution of frequency
sensitive loads in stabilizing the system frequency, better perfor-
mance is attained. Accordingly, the load damping coefficient is
varied as D = D + 0.9D in this study.
Authors in Mahto et al. (2021) divided the required secondary
frequency control between demand response and the supplemen-
tary control loops according to their price at real-time electricity
market. They defined the share of supplementary control, α , to be
between 0 and 1. Accordingly, DR share is (1 −α ) since the sum of
the participation factors should be unity. The suggested scheme
considers a fixed amount of DR to be controlled regardless of the
disturbance level. To observe the contribution of DR in frequency
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regulation, different share values are applied in LFC-DR model
and compared to the conventional LFC. Fig. 3 indicates that for
a higher DR contribution, a slight improvement in the dynamic
performance is attained. When 10% of the required control is
provided by the supplementary loop and 90% (fixed) from DR, a
minor improvement in the overshoot is noticed.
Hence, this paper aims to minimize the share of DR based
on the disturbance level using a modified adaptive hill climbing
(AHC) scheme (Pourmousavi and Nehrir, 2011; Weidong and
Dunford, 2004). A high share of DR will be assigned when the
disturbance occurs, and this share decreases with time as the
frequency deviation reduces. This scheme is adaptive since the
DR share is a function of the frequency deviation that tends
to minimize the deviation with the highest possible effort. The
system frequency deviation is the input variable to the controller.
A. Al-Hinai, H. Alyammahi and H. Haes Alhelou
Fig. 4. Frequency response when fThreshold = 0.005 Hz.
Fig. 5. Frequency response when M = 0.2.
At every time step, t, once the frequency deviation exceeds the
desired limit (i.e., |(∆f )| > fThreshold ) where fThreshold is the desired
threshold value for the frequency deviation, the DR share is
calculated as follows:
αDR (t) = αDR (t − 1) + ∆f × M (2)
where αDR (t − 1) is the previous value of DR share (at step t − 1)
and the perturbation factor is M ∗ ∆f where M is a constant used
to bound the change in αDR . For higher M values, the dynamic
performance may improve, but this will disturb the customers’
QoS since more responsive loads will be controlled. Moreover,
when the value of M is high, it will presumably increase the
oscillations in the frequency deviation.
In this study, fThreshold and M are tuned by PSO and their opti-
mal values are 0.005 Hz, and 0.2, respectively. Several simulation
experiments have been carried out under a load disturbance of
0.01 p.u in order to evaluate the system response and confirm the
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Energy Reports 7 (2021) 8030–8041
optimal values. Different thresholds for the frequency deviation
were applied starting from fThreshold = 0.005 to fThreshold = 0.05
with step size of 0.001. The result when fThreshold = 0.005 Hz, is
presented in Fig. 4. It is clear that when M is set to be 0.2, it gives
the most acceptable result compared to other values of M. This
conclusion is also true under the other threshold values for the
frequency deviation. In Fig. 5, it is evident that by comparing the
frequency response when M is fixed at 0.2, the best performance
attained is when fThreshold = 0.005. Therefore, those values are
evidently considered in this paper.
Since DR cannot provide a great enhancement in the frequency
regulation, BESS is proposed to further improve the system per-
formance. In this paper, αBESS is optimized by PSO and its optimal
value is 0.9. In order to examine the contribution of BESS in
frequency regulation, different share values were tested in LFC-
BESS model and compared with the conventional LFC. As proved
in Fig. 6, for a higher change in BESS contribution, a notable
A. Al-Hinai, H. Alyammahi and H. Haes Alhelou Energy Reports 7 (2021) 8030–8041

Fig. 6. Frequency deviation under a step load disturbance of 0.01 p.u.

Fig. 7. The flowchart of the proposed share allocation scheme in frequency regulation.

improvement in the dynamic performance is obtained. When 10% the supplementary control. The flowchart of the proposed share
of the required control is provided by the supplementary loop allocation scheme is presented in Fig. 7 where:
and 90% from BESS, a significant enhancement in the settling time
• αsupp. + αDR + αBESS = 1
and the overshoot is observed. However, as discussed earlier, the
contribution of BESS is limited because of the SOC and DOD.
• αBESS = 0.9
• 0 ≤ αDR ≤ 0.1
After performing the above comprehensive studies, there is an
abundant evidence to fix the BESS contribution to 0.9. As a result, The aim of the proposed control scheme is to minimize the
the remaining share is 0.1, which will be shared between DR and dependency on the supplementary control as well as the DR.
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A. Al-Hinai, H. Alyammahi and H. Haes Alhelou Energy Reports 7 (2021) 8030–8041

Compared to the speed governor, the proposed control strategy exist as can be seen from (8). Moreover, with the availability
performs faster because of the rapid response of the electrical of DR and BESS in the LFC, more degrees of freedom for the
loads and BESS. frequency regulation is provided. In the case when the supple-
mentary control cannot be accessed, the DR and BESS control
2.3. Steady-state error evaluation of the proposed model loops can guarantee a zero frequency deviation at steady state,
if their resources are sufficient to match the changes in the
It is well known that the fastest frequency control is the droop demand. The control effort required for controlling the frequency
control. However, in the case of a significant contingency, for is split among the control loops of supplementary, DR, and BESS
example the loss of a large generating unit, the droop character- as described previously.
istic is not enough to guarantee a zero steady state error in the
frequency deviation. As a result, the supplementary control loop 3. The design of the proposed control scheme
is essential to bring the system frequency back to its nominal
value (Kundur, 1994). The DR and BESS control loops are inte- Traditionally, the secondary frequency control, known as LFC
grated in this study for further control. Hence, it is required to or AGC, is usually implemented by a conventional PI controller.
evaluate the effect of the DR and BESS control loops on the steady These controllers are usually tuned based on trial and error ap-
state error. proach and in the best situation adjusted based on pre-knowledge
Eq. (1) can be rearranged as follows: and experiences of the operator. The main reason for incorpo-
1 rating PI controllers into the LFC is to effectively regulate the
∆f (s) = [∆PT (s)−∆PL (s)+∆PDR (s)+∆PBESS (s)], system frequency deviation to zero. The integral term is essential
2H · s + (D + ∆D)
to guarantee the zero steady state error while the proportional
(3) term is mainly needed to reduce the overshoot and enhance the
where ∆PT B(s) · [∆PSupp. (s) − 1
∆f (s) ], system dynamic performance (Goodwin et al., 2001). Many classi-
R
cal control methods have been implemented to tune PI controllers
1 like the well-known Ziegler–Nichols, Cohen–Coon, and Internal
B(s) = , (4)
(1 + s · Tg )(1 + s · Tt ) Model Control (Meshram and Kanojiya, 2012; Astrom and Hag-
glund, 2005). The main limitation of the previous methods is
By substituting (4) into (3):
their dependency on the system parameters. If the system operat-
1 1 ing conditions will change, the conventional controllers (e.g. PI)
∆f (s) = [B(s) · [∆PSupp. (s) − ∆f (s)]
2H · s + (D + ∆D) R (5) will be unable to provide sufficient control services in order to
− ∆PL + ∆PDR (s) + ∆PBESS (s)] achieve suitable dynamic performance. On the other hand, we
propose and adaptive control approach which can enhance the
By rearranging (5): performance of the proposed adaptive controller in this paper
B(s) continuously track the fluctuations in the power system and re-
∆f (s)[2H · s + (D + ∆D) + ] = B(s) · ∆PSupp. (s) − ∆PL (s) ject them. Such a controller will lead to the optimum performance
R (6)
+ ∆PDR (s) + ∆PBESS (s) required by the power system operator. Fuzzy logic has been
utilized as an intelligent tool for online adjusting of the controller
Solving (6) for ∆f (s): for over twenty years with achieving good control results (Zadeh,
1 1965).
∆f (s) = In this section, a PI-based intelligent controller is suggested
2H · s + (D + ∆D) +
B(s)
R
and designed using the combination of PSO and fuzzy logic. The
· [B(s) · ∆PSupp. (s) + ∆PDR (s) + ∆PBESS (s)] (7) fuzzy logic has the ability to compensate the shortages in the
1 traditional PI control theory especially for the complex systems
− · ∆PL (s)
2H · s + (D + ∆D) +
B(s) such as power systems where the level of uncertainties is high.
R
Generally, a fuzzy system has four parts, namely: fuzzy rule base,
∆P
where ∆PL (s) = S L ; the load disturbance is expressed as a unit fuzzification, inference system, and defuzzification (Mendel and
step function. Mouzouris, 1997).
The steady state value of frequency deviation is attained as To implement fuzzy systems to adjust the controllers’ gains,
follows: a set of fuzzy rules and relations is needed where 18 fuzzy rules
[∆PSupp,ss + ∆PDR,ss + ∆PBESS ,ss − ∆PL,ss ] are suggested in this paper to map the load fluctuation (∆P L ) and
∆fss = lim s · ∆f (s) = deviation of the frequency (∆f ) as input variables to the fuzzy
s→0 [2H · s + (D + ∆D) + B(s)
R
] system. Likewise, the outputs of the fuzzy system are defined
(8) as proportional gain (Kp ) and integral gain (Ki ), respectively. The
fuzzy rules adopted in this paper are provided in Table 1. The
where proposed fuzzy PI controller has the ability to improve the dy-
∆PSupp,ss = lim s · B(s) · ∆PSupp. (s) (9) namic performance of the system, where this promising result is
s→0 true based on a comparison with the other controllers. It is worth
∆PDR,ss = lim s · ∆PDR (s) (10) mentioning that the performance of fuzzy controllers is strongly
s→0
relied on the well-design of the membership functions. It can be
∆PBESS ,ss = lim s · ∆PBESS (s) (11) stated that the optimal selection of the relationships and fuzzy
s→0
rules has the most of the impact on the controller performance.
B(s) B(0)
[2H · s + (D + ∆D) + ]S =0 = (D + ∆D) + Therefore, an algorithm is required to optimally select and tuning
R R the membership functions which can guarantee the best dynamic
1 performance. This is necessary especially for systems with wide
≈ (D + ∆D) + (12)
R range of operating conditions, like power systems. In literature,
The steady state value for the frequency deviation will be zero PSO has been used successfully in power system controllers de-
if, and only if, the supplementary and/or DR and/or BESS controls sign since it guarantees a high accuracy result. It is also easy to
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A. Al-Hinai, H. Alyammahi and H. Haes Alhelou Energy Reports 7 (2021) 8030–8041

Fig. 8. The adaptive PSO based fuzzy PI controller in the closed-loop system.

Fig. 9. (a) Variable load disturbance. (b) Frequency response under variable load disturbance.

implement and it requires less optimization time compared to
other optimization methods. The optimal response is achieved
from any given initial guess. Therefore, in this paper the PSO is
utilized for adjusting the fuzzy PI controller membership func-
tions. The PSO algorithm has been described in Zhan et al. (2009),
Al-Omari and Al-Hinai (2007), Al-Hinai and Al-Hinai (2009). The
adaptive PSO based fuzzy PI control structure (adaptive LFC) is
shown in Fig. 8.
The robustness of the adaptive PSO based fuzzy PI controller
is proved in an earlier work (Al Yammahi and Al-Hinai, 2015).
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Results showed that the adaptive PSO-fuzzy PI controller had
a significant improvement in the microgrid system frequency
compared to the conventional PI controller (tuned by Ziegler–
Nichols) and the fuzzy PI controller in the presence of multiple
load disturbances. Additionally, the conventional controller as
well as the fuzzy PI controller could not manage the integration
of RESs due to their intermittency. In the contrast, the proposed
adaptive controller guaranteed a stable frequency response under
the variable wind and photovoltaic generation.
A. Al-Hinai, H. Alyammahi and H. Haes Alhelou
Fig. 10. Frequency deviation for adaptive LFC-DR-BESS.
It is worth mentioning that the main focus of this research is
on the frequency control in modern power systems, therefore, the
details related to adaptive PSO is omitted since it is not the main
contribution to the research. A comprehensive details related to
PSO can be found in Zhan et al. (2009), Al-Omari and Al-Hinai
(2007), and Al-Hinai and Al-Hinai (2009). The required data for
tuning the PSO is given in Appendix.
The next section presents the contribution of minimum DR
and BESS utilizing the adaptive fuzzy PI controller tuned based
an evolutionary algorithm, i.e. PSO.
4. Simulation results and discussion
Simulation experiments have been carried out to the islanded
microgrid, shown in Fig. 1, to evaluate the impacts of the mini-
mum DR share and BESS contribution in the secondary frequency
control as well as to illuminate the effectiveness of the proposed
coordinated LFC scheme. The rated power of the generation unit
(supplementary control) and BESS are listed in Table 2 in Ap-
pendix. The studied microgrid system parameters are listed in
Table 3.
4.1. Scenario I: LFC-min(DR)
In this case, the adaptive LFC is compared to the proposed
adaptive LFC-min(DR) while considering a variable load distur-
bance that is shown in Fig. 9(a). The system frequency response
is presented in Fig. 9(b). It is obvious that with the minimum DR
participation in frequency regulation, the dynamic performance
is enhanced in terms of the settling-time, overshoot, as well as in
minimizing the oscillations. Furthermore, the adaptive fuzzy PI
controller tuned based on PSO reveals robustness of the system
against the dynamic and sudden disturbances.
4.2. Scenario II: LFC-DR-BESS
In this scenario, the same system is studied after incorporating
the BESS control loop into the developed adaptive LFC-min(DR). It
can be seen in Fig. 10 that due to the contribution of BESS in the
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Energy Reports 7 (2021) 8030–8041
secondary frequency control, a superior performance has been
achieved. A significant improvement in the overshoot as well as
the settling time is attained. Additionally, in Fig. 11, it is proved
that the objective of the proposed control scheme is met where
the contribution from the supplementary control in stabilizing
the microgrid frequency is significantly reduced.
4.3. Scenario III: Limitation of BESS
In the first scenario, when the load increases suddenly by
3% at t = 8 s as demonstrated in Fig. 9(a), the BESS becomes
fully discharged at t = 10 s. The system frequency response is
displayed in Fig. 12. By comparing the adaptive LFC-DR-BESS with
limited and unlimited BESS SOC, it is clear that the limitation of
the BESS capacity affects the system frequency response. Even
though the BESS becomes fully-discharged, the proposed adaptive
LFC-DR-BESS guarantees a better performance compared to the
adaptive LFC model where the minimum share of DR compen-
sates the loss of BESS. On the other hand, when the load abruptly
drops at t = 30 s by 5%, the BESS becomes fully-charged and
the limits on its charging and discharging capacity is applied as
shown in Fig. 13. The deviation in system frequency response
is illustrated in Fig. 12. By comparing the adaptive LFC-DR-BESS
model with limited and unlimited BESS contribution, it is notable
that with the limited capacity of BESS, DR plays an important role
in enhancing the system frequency.
4.4. Discussion and future work
There is a great tendency for future power plants to integrate
numerous Distributed Generations (DGs), thus the problem that
will arise is what will happen to the LFC requirements since the
conventional controllers may not be able to withstand the contin-
uous variations and uncertainties in power generation. Moreover,
in islanded microgrids, the system challenges increase and the
need for having a complementary control loop is vital.
The current work can be considered as a solution to the
above issues and concerns where the adaptive control scheme
has been developed with integrating DR and BESS control loops
A. Al-Hinai, H. Alyammahi and H. Haes Alhelou
Fig. 11. Contribution from the supplementary control loop.
Fig. 12. BESS limitation in adaptive LFC-DR-BESS.
into the LFC. In this paper, we have mainly focused on regulat-
ing the system frequency while minimizing the dependency on
the conventional spinning reserves. DR and BESS show a great
enhancement in balancing generation and demand. In addition,
they help in avoiding the use of the conventional AGC which is
environmentally unfriendly.
It is proven that the adaptive PSO based fuzzy controller
performs an important role in managing the short-term dis-
turbances. Moreover, with the minimum DR participation, the
system performance enhances and consumers’ QoS is maintained.
BESS also added a great improvement in frequency regulation.
However, the contribution of BESS is limited due to the SOC and
DOD limitations as discussed earlier. So, with the availability of
the intelligent controller as well as DR in the LFC, more degree
of freedom for the frequency regulation is achieved. Without
having the proposed control scheme, it may be very challenging
to integrate large number of DGs into the power system.
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Energy Reports 7 (2021) 8030–8041
5. Conclusion
Conventional controllers are commonly unable to provide a
good performance in the presence of serious disturbances. In
response to this issue, an adaptive PI controller is utilized for LFC
problem in the present paper using fuzzy logic based PSO tuning
method. Adaptive fuzzy controller has a good performance com-
pared to the conventional control methods. However, the optimal
performance is not assured. In order to guarantee the optimal
performance under a wide operating range, the PSO algorithm is
used to optimally choose the membership functions. This paper
proposes a further control scheme by introducing the minimum
participation of DR and BESS into the LFC problem. The developed
control scheme has been implemented for a single area power
system. The balance between generation and demand is achieved
by utilizing BESS and a percentage of available responsive loads
and the supplementary control, based on the suggested optimal
share allocation scheme. The main objective of the proposed
control strategy is to replace the costly conventional reserves
A. Al-Hinai, H. Alyammahi and H. Haes Alhelou Energy Reports 7 (2021) 8030–8041

Fig. 13. Limitation of BESS contribution.

with DR and BESS. It is well known that storage devices as well as Table 2
DR can compensate the variations and the uncertainties in power Rated power of generation unit and BESS units and loads.

system. Additionally, they show a great promise in enhancing Rated Power (KW) Load (KW)
the system efficiency. It is revealed through different simulation Generation unit 160 PL
180
studies that the proposed control scheme improves the overall BESS 45

performance of the system frequency.

Table 3
CRediT authorship contribution statement Power system parameters (Zhan et al., 2009; Bevrani, 2009).
Tg Tt R 2H D Td TBESS
Amer Al-Hinai: Conceptualization, Data curation, Methodol- 0.08 s 0.4 s 3.0 Hz/p.u. 0.1667 p.u. s 0.015 p.u./Hz 0.1 s 0.1 s
ogy, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Writing – review
& editing. Hajer Alyammahi: Conceptualization, Data curation,
Methodology, Simulation experiments Formal analysis, Writing –
original draft. Hassan Haes Alhelou: Data curation, Methodology, In what follows, the used data in tuning PSO is given: Popu-
Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing, Funding, Project lation Size = 11; Numbers of iterations = 50; Inertia Weight (w)
administration. = 0.8; Cognitive Coefficient (C1) = 2; Social Coefficient (C2) = 2.

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