Event-Triggered Load Frequency Control Based on Age-of-Information

This article investigates the role of age of information (AoI) in the load frequency control (LFC) of power systems. Smart grids employ an open information update system, which introduces pressing issues such as management of information freshness and limitation of communication bandwidth. Communication delay, though widely used to characterize the information packets, is not able to keep up the information freshness and often becomes the inherent source of information staleness. In this article, AoI is used in the design of an event-triggered communication scheduler to manage the information updating process and alleviate the effect of limited communication bandwidth. AoI is also used in the design of an LQR (linear quadratic regulator) controller for the improvement of LFC performance. Case studies are presented to demonstrate that the proposed LFC-AoI model and the event-triggered LQR controller offer better LFC performance than the existing LFC methods.