Hierarchical Coordinated Fast Frequency Control Using Inverter-Based Resources

The share of inverter-connected renewable energy resources (RESs) is increasing in the grid, with these resources partially displacing conventional synchronous generators. This has resulted in increased variability of active power supply, reduced overall inertia, and increased spatial heterogeneity of inertia, leading to faster system frequency dynamics along with larger and more frequent frequency control events. These effects are expected to become increasingly more important in power system control in next-generation grids, which may conceivably be made up entirely of RESs. To mitigate these challenges, a fast, area-based hierarchical control strategy is proposed. This scheme partitions the power system into small areas, estimates local power imbalances, and corrects them by utilizing local inverter-based resources (IBRs). In cases where sufficient resources are not available locally, power is preferentially sourced from electrically close neighbours using an iterative distributed optimization scheme which preserves information privacy between areas. The proposed frequency control architecture can be retrofit onto existing control systems, and allows for flexibility in the amount of model information available to the designer. The control strategy is validated on two detailed multi-area power system models. Simulation results show that the strategy provides fast and localized frequency control.