Comparison of adaptive critic-based and classical wide-area controllers for power systems

Area of Science:

• Power Systems Engineering
• Control Theory
• Computational Intelligence

Background:

• Power systems face challenges with poorly damped interarea modes.
• Thyristor-controlled series capacitors (TCSC) are crucial for stability.
• Existing damping controllers often rely on linearized system models.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate an adaptive critic design (ACD)-based damping controller for TCSC.
• To compare the ACD method with classical observer-based state-feedback (SF) and LMI-H(infinity) robust control.
• To assess controller performance using remote measurements for wide-area damping control.

Main Methods:

• Developed a nonlinear, measurement-based ACD controller.
• Implemented and compared ACD with SF and LMI-H(infinity) controllers.
• Utilized remote measurements for TCSC compensation modulation.
• Conducted performance analysis under various disturbance scenarios.

Main Results:

• The ACD-based controller demonstrated promising performance.
• ACD required significantly less system knowledge than model-based classical methods.
• Comparative analysis highlighted the effectiveness of the ACD approach.

Conclusions:

• ACD offers an effective, data-driven approach for wide-area damping control.
• The method shows advantages in scenarios with limited system model information.
• Discussion provided insights into the pros and cons of ACD, SF, and LMI-H(infinity) controllers.