Examination of Wide Area Control Methods to Face Inter-Area Oscillations

Transmission systems are prone to experience interarea oscillations, triggered by groups of generators situated on different geographical locations oscillating against each other. In this paper, this particular problem is addressed and different control methodologies using wide-area monitoring that vary on complexity are proposed. The first approach is a proportional (P) gain that consider availability of measurements from different areas of the system and solve an optimization function to command the most influence group of machines in the system. The second approach is a Linear Quadratic Gaussian methodology that uses wide area measurements as control inputs. Finally, a proportional-integral (PI) controller that considers the availability of measurements from different areas is discussed. The first two approaches were tested through different simulations on IEEE benchmark models and the latest approach was tested using a control-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop setup. To conclude, a perspective of wide-area damping controller implementation in a real laboratory demonstrator is presented.