Challenges and Opportunities of Load Frequency Control in Conventional, Modern and Future Smart Power Systems: A Comprehensive Review

Abstract

Power systems are the most complex systems that have been created by men in history. To operate such systems in a stable mode, several control loops are needed. Voltage frequency plays a vital role in power systems which need to be properly controlled. To this end, primary and secondary frequency control loops are used to control the frequency of the voltage in power systems. Secondary frequency control, which is called Load Frequency Control (LFC), is responsible for maintaining the frequency in a desirable level after a disturbance. Likewise, the power exchanges between different control areas are controlled by LFC approaches. In recent decades, many control approaches have been suggested for LFC in power systems. This paper presents a comprehensive literature survey on the topic of LFC. In this survey, the used LFC models for diverse configurations of power systems are firstly investigated and classified for both conventional and future smart power systems. Furthermore, the proposed control strategies for LFC are studied and categorized into different control groups. The paper concludes with highlighting the research gaps and presenting some new research directions in the field of LFC.Energies 2018, 11, 2497 2 of 35 before triggering the under/over frequency protection relays. The primary frequency control is usually implemented by the governor droop which results in steady stated errors. The secondary frequency control, which is called load frequency control (LFC) or automatic generation control (AGC), is responsible for regulating the frequency in power systems and has two main goals: (i) maintaining the frequency into a desirable range; and (ii) controlling the interchange power through major tie-lines between the different control areas. The main task of tertiary control level is re-dispatching generating units and ancillary reserve after a sever disturbance.With increasing the penetration level of renewable resources such as wind farms and photovoltaic plants in power systems, the uncertainties of active power production is highly increased, thus determining frequency variations. Such increase in active power fluctuation, beside the demand stochasticity, the frequency of power system would be highly oscillated. Therefore, future power systems need more robust and optimal LFC approaches that can handle such problems.Many control approaches have been suggested for LFC in interconnected power systems. These approaches can be categorized into four groups: (i) classical control approaches focus on designing proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controllers for controlling the frequency and tie-lines power flows; (ii) modern control approaches including optimal control method, sliding mode control schemes, and adaptive control systems; (iii) intelligent control schemes, such as fuzzy control systems; and (iv) soft computing-based approaches for controllers' parameter tuning which had a considerable attention from researchers in the last decade. Survey MethodologySeveral methodologies can be followed for conduc...

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