Voltage Coordination via Communication in Large-Scale Multi-Area Power Systems. Part II: Simulation Results

This two-part paper deals with the coordination of the control actions in a network of many interacting components, where each component is controlled by independent control agents. As a case study we consider voltage control in large electric power systems where ever-increasing pressures from the liberalization and globalization of the electricity market has led to partitioning the power system into multiple areas each operated by an independent Transmission System Operator (TSO). Coordination of local control actions taken by those TSOs is a very challenging problem as poorly coordinated operation of TSOs may endanger the power system security by increasing the risk of blackouts. This second part of the paper presents simulation results on a 12-bus 3-area test system, using the distributed model predictive control paradigm in order to design a coordinating model-based feedback controller. Coordination requires that each agent has some information on what the future evolution of its power flows to and from its neighbors will be. It will be shown that how the communication between agents can avoid voltage collapse in circumstances where classical uncoordinated controllers fail.