Distributed Model Predictive Load Frequency Control of the Multi-Area Power System After Deregulation

This paper proposes a distributed model predictive control scheme for the load frequency control (LFC) problem of the deregulated multi-area interconnected power system with contracted and uncontracted load demands. The traditional LFC of the interconnected power system is modified to take into account the effect of bilateral contracts on the dynamics. The concept of the distribution company participation matrix and area participation matrix are introduced to simulate these bilateral contracts and reflected in the multi-area block diagram. The distributed model predictive controller is designed by posing the LFC problem as a tracking control problem in the presence of both external disturbances and constraints that represent generation rate constraint and load reference setpoint constraint, respectively. Analysis and simulation results for a deregulated three-area interconnected power system show possible improvements on closed-loop performance and computational burden, while respecting the physical hard constraints.