Robust Control Methodology for the Design of Supplementary Damping Controllers for Facts Devices

In this paper, a new procedure to design Supplementary Damping Controllers (SDCs) for Flexible Alternating Current Transmission System (FACTS) devices is proposed. The control design problem is formulated as a search for a feasible controller subject to restrictions in the form of Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs). The main objective, from the application viewpoint, is the improvement of the damping ratios associated to inter-area oscillation modes. Unlike other types of formulations existing in the literature, this new formulation is capable of explicitly modeling the constraints on the controller bandwidth, which are crucial to avoid undesired amplification of high frequency noise signals coming into the controller input. To illustrate the efficiency of the proposed procedure, the design of an SDC for a Thyristor Controlled Series Capacitor (TCSC) placed in the New England/New York benchmark test system is carried out. The results show the designed controllers are able to provide adequate damping for the oscillations modes of interest for several different operating conditions.