Frequency Regulation using Data-Driven Controllers in Power Grids with Variable Inertia due to Renewable Energy

With the increasing penetration of non-synchronous variable renewable energy sources (RES) in power grids, the system's inertia decreases and varies over time, affecting the capability of current control schemes to handle frequency regulation. Providing virtual inertia to power systems has become an interesting topic of research, since it may provide a reasonable solution to address this new issue. However, power dynamics are usually modeled as time-invariant, without including the effect of varying inertia due to the presence of RES. This paper presents a framework to design a fixed learned controller based on datasets of optimal time-varying LQR controllers. In our scheme, we model power dynamics as a hybrid system with discrete modes representing different rotational inertia regimes of the grid. We test the performance of our controller in a twelve-bus system using different fixed inertia modes. We also study our learned controller as the inertia changes over time. By adding virtual inertia we can guarantee stability of high-renewable (low-inertia) modes. The novelty of our work is to propose a design framework for a stable controller with fixed gains for time-varying power dynamics. This is relevant because it would be simpler to implement a proportional controller with fixed gains compared to a time-varying control.