Real-Time HIL Simulation for Frequency Regulation in DFIG with AGC: An Egyptian Case Study

A sudden change in loads creates troubles in grids/microgrids (MGs) such as frequency fluctuations. For balancing between generation and demand, a Doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) has been incorporated into the Egyptian power system (EG-EPS) to provide additional inertia. The studied EG-EPS consists of three conventional power plants (reheat, non-reheat, and hydro) as the main sources of generation, with 20% DFIG participation. The existing literature highlights that the control methods employ for LFC and DFIG in MGs are insufficiently coordinated for minimizing deviations in frequency and power. This limitation arises due to narrow control constraints and inadequate sensitivity to disturbances. To this regard, this paper proposes an adaptive control-based balloon effect modulation (BE) to tune the PID controller for the Automatic Generation Control (AGC) and to tune the PI controller of the DFIG speed controller. The balloon effect tool is used to minimize the impact of system load disturbance by increasing the optimizer sensitivity and traceability. The EG-EPS is examined under the influence of a 2% step load perturbation and random load variations using dSPACE DS1006 and real-time digital simulator (RTDS) as a Hard-In-Loop (HIL) test platform. The proposed controller demonstrates superior performance compared to the conventional one in terms of overshoot, undershoot, and stabilizing time.