On the Impact of Discrete Secondary Controllers on Power System Dynamics

This paper discusses the impact of discrete secondary controllers on the dynamic response of power systems. The idea of the paper originates from the observation that there is a range of values, from few tens of seconds to few minutes, of the execution cycles of conventional automatic generation control (AGC) that leads to a limit cycle. Below and above this range the system is stable. This is certainly not a problem in practice as the AGC updates the power set points of generating units every few seconds. However, this phenomenon has interesting consequences if one considers real-time electricity markets with short dispatch periods (i.e., 5 minutes) as these markets can be modeled as a sort of AGC. The paper first provides a formal analogy between conventional AGC and real-time electricity markets. Then it shows that the discretization-driven instability exists if the system includes a real-time electricity market modeled as secondary frequency controller. Finally, the paper discusses the impact of the combined effect of high wind generation shares and discrete secondary controllers on power system dynamics.