ELECTRIC

POUJER
SYSTErnS
Electric Power Systems Rescarch 42 (1997) 145-152
RESEClRCH

Area load frequency control using fuzzy gain scheduling of

PI controllers
C.S. Chang *, Weihui Fu
Department of Electrical Enginewing, National liniwrsity of Singapore, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260, Singapore

Received 8 November 1996

Abstract

This paper presents a new approach to study the area
proportional-integral (PI) controllers. The control scheme
zero steady state time error and inadvertent interchange.
power system with control deadbands and generation
performance of the proposed controller. 0 1997 Elsevier
load frequency control (LFC) problem using fuzzy gain scheduling of
adopts a formulation for the area control error which always guarantees
The proposed control has been designed for a four-area interconnected
rate constraints. Simulation results confirm the designed control
Science S.A.

Keywords: Load frequency control; Gain scheduling; Fuzzy logic control

1. Introduction quires information on the system states which are very

difficult to know completely.
Load-frequency control (LFC) is a very important In view of this, a new area load frequency controller
component in power system operation and control for based on fuzzy gain scheduling of PI controller is
supplying sufficient and reliable electric power with proposed in this paper. Gain scheduling is a technique
good quality. The objective of the LFC is to satisfy the commonly used in designing controller for non-linear
following classical requirements in a multi-area inter- systems. Its main advantage is that controller parame-
connected power system [15]: ters can be changed very quickly in responseto changes
(i) Zero steady-state errors of tie-line exchanges and in the system dynamics because no parameter estima-
frequency deviations. tion is required. Besides being an effective method to
(ii) Optimal transient behaviour. compensate for non-linear and other predictable varia-
(iii) In steady state: the power generation levels tions in the system dynamics, it is also simpler to
should satisfy the optimal dispatch conditions. implement than automatic tuning or adaptation. How-
Many investigations have been reported in the past ever. conventional gain scheduling also has its draw-
pertaining to load frequency control of a multi-area backs. One drawback is that the system parameter
interconnected power system. In the literature, some change may be rather abrupt across the regional
control strategies have been proposed based on classical boundaries, which may result in unsatisfactory or even
linear control theory [9,12]. However, because of the unstable performance across the transition regions. An-
inherent characteristics of the changing loads, the oper- other problem is that accurate linear time-invariant
ating point of a power system changes continuously models at various operating points may be too difficult
during a daily cycle. Thus, a fixed controller may no or even impossible to obtain.
longer be suitable in all operating conditions. There are In order to solve the above-mentioned problems of
some authors who have applied variable structure con- conventional gain scheduling, this paper introduces a
trol [1,2,6,1 l] to make the controller insensitive to fuzzy rule-based scheme for gain scheduling of PI con-
system parameters change. However, this method re- trollers. Interest in fuzzy logic has grown considerably
over the past few years. The fuzzy reasoning approach
is motivated by the following advantages [3]: (a) it
* Corresponding author. E-mail: eleccs@leonis.nus.sg provides an efficient way of coping with imperfect

0378-7796/97/$17.00 Q 1997 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.

PII SO378-7796(96)01199-6
146 C.S. Chang, W. Fu /Electric Power Systems Research 42 (1997) 145-152

information, especially imprecision in available knowl-

edge; (b) it offers flexibility in decision-making pro-
cesses; and (c) it gives an interesting man/machine
interface by simplifying rule extraction from human
experts and by allowing a simpler a posteriori interpre-
tation of the system reasoning. In this paper we utilize
fuzzy rules and reasoning to determine the controller
parameters. Thus the controller has the ability to
change its parameters when the system dynamics or the
characteristics of the disturbance are changing. More-
Fig. 2. The scheme of fuzzy gain scheduling.
over, this method does not need an accurate model of
the dynamics of the system under control. To further
improve the performance of the controller, a new for- interchange. The modified expression for area control
mulation of the area control error [5] is also adopted. for the mth area ACEN, is:
With this method, interconnected systems can always ACEN, = AP,,, m+ B,,, AF,, + a,&, + %I,,,
obtain zero steady state time error and inadvertent
interchange. = ACE, + a,&, + a,I, (1)
The paper is organized as follows: in Section 2, a This equation is different from the conventional area
comprehensive mathematical model of a four-area in- control error since E,,, and Z, are, respectively, the time
terconnected power system including governor dead- error and inadvertent interchange of area m and are
bands and generation rate constraints is presented. A updated at every sampling instant. ACEN, may be
proposed fuzzy gain scheduling controller is described rewritten as
in Section 3. Results obtained from the application are
presented in Section 4. The concluding remarks are ACEN.,.=AP,,,+B..AF;,+z,,(I.,+~i.) (2)
contained in Section 5.
Setting x,/c(, = 608, [5], then
ACEN, = AP,i, m + B, AF,
2. System model
+G,s(Apt,,
m+4nAFm)
dt
An interconnected power system can be considered
as being divided into control areas which are connected = ACE, + CI, ACE, dt (3)
by tie lines. In each control area, all generators are s
assumed to form a coherent group. The power system is where
subjected to local variations of random magnitude and
duration. Hence, it is required to control the deviations 1
Em= 60 AF,,, dt, I, = APti, m dt
of frequency and tie-line power of each control area. s s
The study system, consisting of four areas, is shown in Thus, the new area control error ACEN, is the sum
Fig. 1. The power stations are assumed to contain three of the conventional ACE and the integral of the con-
reheat turbine type thermal units and one hydro unit. ventional ACE. It will guarantee zero steady state time
The detailed block diagram of this system and data are error and inadvertent interchange. Then, the control
shown in Appendix A. vector in continuous mode can be given as
Ref. [5] proposed a new technique for co-ordinating
system-wide corrections of time error and inadvertent U,(t) = - K,ACEN,(t) - K, ACEN,(t) dt (4)
s

NB NM NS ZO PS PM PB

X = ACENn or AACENn

Fig. 1. Simplified diagram of an interconnected system Fig. 3. Membership functions for ACEN,(k) and AACEN,(k).
 C.S. Chang, W. Fu /Electric Power Systems Research 42 (1997) 145-152 147

Table 1
Fuzzy tuning rules for Kb
Big
AACEN,(k)
I
NB NM NS ZO PS PM PB

NB B B B B B B B
NMS B B B B B S
NS S S B B B S S
ACEN,(k) ZO S S S S S S S
PS S S B B B S S
x = I$,’ or K,’ PMS B B B B B S
PB B B B B B B B
Fig. 4. Membership functions for KD and K;

The function approach described is used to incorpo- In the proposed scheme, PI parameters are deter-
rate governor deadband nonlinearity [13]. It has been mined based on the current ACEN, and its first differ-
found that the backlash nonlinearity tends to produce a ence AACEN,. It is also assumed that &., and Ki are in
continuous sinusoidal oscillation with a natural period the prescribedranges[Kp,min,&,,,J and [Kl,rnin,~1,,,,1,
of about 2 s. An approximate Fourier series solution respectively. The appropriate ranges are determined
has been developed as follows [13]: experimentally for each area. For convenience, K,, and
K1 are normalized into a range between zero and one by
F(x, i) = 0.8x - g i
71 the following linear transformation:
where the above Fourier coefficients stand for a back-
lash of 0.05%.
In practice, there is a maximum limit to the rate of
change in generation power of a steam plant [14]. A
typical value of the generation rate constraint for a The parameters Kb and K; are determined by a set of
large reheat-type thermal unit is considered to be 3%/ fuzzy rules of the form
min, while for hydro units a typical value for raising the
if ACEN,(k) is Ai and AACEN,(k) is Bi,
generation rate would be 4.5%/s (270%/min) and 6%/s
(360%/min) for lowering the generation rate [8]. Here, a then Kb is C, and K; is Di i = 1,2 ,..., n. (7)
value of 3%/min is used for the reheat-type thermal
units and 4.5%/s for the hydro unit. Here, A, B,, C, and Di are fuzzy sets on the correspond-
ing supporting sets. The membership function (MF)
sets for ACEN,(k) and AACEN,(k) are shown in Fig.
3. The proposed fuzzy gain scheduling controller 3, in which N, P, ZO, S, M, B, NB and NM represent
respectively negative, positive, approximately zero,
Gain scheduling is an effective way of controlling small, medium, big, negative big, and negative medium.
systems whose dynamics change non-linearly with oper- The fuzzy sets C, and Di can be either Big or Small and
ating conditions [4]. It is normally used when the are characterized by the membership functions shown
relationship between the system dynamics and operat- in Fig. 4, where the grade of the membership functions
ing conditions are known, and for which a single linear p and the variable x ( = Kb or K;) have the following
time-invariant model is insufficient. In this paper, we relation [4]:
use this technique to schedule the parameters of the PI
controller according to change of the new area control Table 2
error ACEN, and AACEN, as depicted in Fig. 2. Fuzzy tuning rules for K;

AACEN,(k)

NB NM NS ZO PS PM PB

NB S S S S S S S
NMS S B B B S S
NS S B B B B B S
ACEN,(k) ZO B B B B B B B
PS S B B B B B S
PMS S B B B S S
1 al
PB S S S S S S S
Fig. 5. Example of a desired step response.
148 C.S. Chang, W. FM /Electric Power Systems Research 42 (1997) 145-152

0 O-

~-0.02 -5..
2

-0.04 -10.
r-----l :‘-

ij-q"
-0.06 jr-- -15

0 50 100 0 50 100

(e) Sec. (0 sec.

Fig. 6. 1% step load increase in area 1: (a) AF,; (b) AF2; (c) AF,; (d) BP,,, ,; (e) E,; (f) I,. (-. proposed controller; ..., fixed PI controller.)

psrnall(~) = - t In x or xsma&) = e ~ 4V for Small integral gain K; respectively, in which B stands for Big,
and S for Small.
pgig(x) = - a ln(1 - X) or X,&L) = 1 - e -‘+ for Big
The value of the ith rule in Eq. (7) ,uuiis obtained by
(8) the product of the MF values of ACEN,(k) and
The fuzzy rules in Eq. (7) may be extracted by AACEN,(k):
experience. Here we derive the rules experimentally
based on the step response of the process. Fig. 5 shows pi = .P~[ACWA~)I. P~WACW,,(~)I (9)
an example of a desired time response. At the begin- where pJACEN,(k)] is the MF value of the fuzzy set
ning, i.e., around a,, we need a big control signal, so Ai according to the value of ACEN,(k), and
the PI controller should have a large proportional gain pi[AACEN,(k)] the MF value of the fuzzy set Bj
to improve the system response, but a small integral according to the value of AACEN,(k). Based on ,ui, the
gain to prevent overshoot [7]. Therefore, the rule values of Kb and K; for each rule are determined from
around a, should be their corresponding membership functions.
From the membership functions in Fig. 3, we can see
if ACEN,(k) is NB and AACEN,(k) is ZO,
that:
then Kb is Big and K; is Small.
Around point a2 in Fig. 5 we need a small control iI,= (10)
signal, so the PI controller should have a small propor-
tional gain to reduce to system oscillations, but a big Then, defuzzification yields the following:
integral gain to eliminate the steady-state error. Then,
the following fuzzy rule is taken.
if ACEN,(k) is ZO and AACEN,(K) is PS,
then Kb is Small and K; is Big.
(11)

Thus, a set of rules, as shown in Tables 1 and 2, may where Kp,i is the value of Kb corresponding to the grade
be used to adapt the proportional gain Kj, and the ,U~for the ith rule, and K;,, is obtained in the same way.
 C.S. Chang, W. Fu /Electric Power Systems Research 42 (1997) 145-152 149

-0.1 -0.1
0 50 100 0 50 100

(a) Sec. (b) Sec.

5x1o-3

3 i
a d
-5-F
I
\
-10 -10
0 50 100 0 50 100

cc> Sec. (4 Sec.

Fig. 7. 1% step load increase in areas 1 and 3: (a) AF,; (b) AF3; (c) Pt,, ,; (d) Pt,, ,,. (-, proposed controller; ..., fixed PI controller.)

After obtaining K;, and K;, the PI controller parame- 5. Conclusions

ters are calculated from the following equations:
An alternative method of large-scale interconnected
Kp = W,,m - Kp,min)Kb + Kp,min power system load frequency control using fuzzy gain
scheduling has been proposed in this paper. Through
KI = W,,max - K~,mirJKi + K~,tin (12) simulations, the performance of the proposed con-
trollers is shown to compare favourably with that of
optimum fixed-gain controllers. The proposed al-
4. Results and analysis gorithm is very simple, effective and robust. In practice,
it can be implemented with few changes to the existing
In order to compare the performance of the proposed controller configurations.
controllers, three different kinds of perturbation have
been considered:
1. 1% step load increase in area 1 [Fig. 6(a)-(f)].
Appendix A. Simulated system data
2. 1% step load increase in area 1 and 3 simultaneously
[Fig. 7(a)-(d)].
In the following, most of the parameters of the
3. 1% step load increase in area 1 and 3, 1% step load
four-area study system in Fig. 9 are from Refs. [10,16]
decrease in area 2 simultaneously [Fig. 8(a)-(h)].
and some of the parameters have been modified:
For comparison, system responses with a PI con-
troller of fixed gains are also shown. The PI controller’s Reheat turbine type thermal units:
fixed gains are optimized using a method as illustrated
in Appendix B [8]. It is observed that the setting time of R = 2.4 Hz/p.u., Tg = 0.2, K,, = 0.333, T,, = 20 s,
the proposed control strategy is much shorter than that T,, = 0.3 s, Kp = 120 Hz/p.u., T, = 20 s.
with a fixed PI controller, and with the proposed con-
troller a large overshoot also can be avoided. More- Hydro unit:
over, the proposed controllers exhibit robustness as
R= 2.4 Hz/p.u., T, =48.7 s, T, =0.513 s,
they show superior performance in all three different
kinds of perturbation. T, = 10 s, T,= ls, Kp = 80 Hz/p.u., Tp= 13 s.
Due to the use of the modified ACEN (Eq. (3)), all
Synchronizing constants:
the controllers lead to zero steady-state frequency and
tie-line power deviations. The proposed control has also T,,= T,, = T14= Tz3 = 0.0707
achieved for each area zero steady values for the time
error and inadvertent interchange. Frequency bias constants:
150 C.S. Chang, W. Fu / Electric Power Systems Research 42 (1997) 145-152

0.05, 0.05

k :k’ -
:”
0 O-
5 i
d d
-0.05

-0.1 -0.05
-0.1’ - ’ I
0 50 100 0 50 100
(0) Set (b) Sec.

0.1 , 1

-0.1 ’ I -151
0 50 105 0 50 100
Cc) SK. (d) 5.32.

0.02 ,
I
0

i ; -5
d d

-10

-0.01 ’ I
0 50 100

(e) Sec.

-0.1
i
d
-0.2

L7

(h) SK.

Fig. 8. 1% step load increase in areas 1 and 3, 1% step load decrease in area 2: (a) AF,; (b) AF2; (c) AF,; (d) AP,, ,; (e) AP,,,>; (f) AP,,,,; (g) E,;
(h) I,. (-, proposed controller; -, fixed PI controller.)

B, = B, = B, = B4 = 0.425 is used for obtaining the optimum PI gain setting.

Inadvertent interchange bias constants: While optimizing the PI gain setting of area 1, areas 2,
3 and 4 are considered uncontrolled and a step load
aI = a2 = a3 = a, = 0.001 perturbation of 1% of the nominal load is considered in
area 1.
Appendix B. Optimum PI gain setting Fig. 10 shows J=f(K,,) for several values of K,, for
a step load perturbation in area 1. K,, = 0.08 and
A performance index K,, = 0.02 are found to be the optimum settings. Fol-
lowing the same procedure the optimum values of PI
J= ~ [AF?(k) + AP~i, i(k)] (BII. 1) controllers are obtained as follows:
k=O
 C.S. Chang, W. Fu/Electric Power Systems Research 42 (1997) 145-1.52 151

Fig. 9. Detailed block diagram of the studied system.

J
0.115
/

0.11

0.105

/
0.1

0.095 , I / I I
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0 .04

J&I

Fig. 10. Performance index J =f(K,,) for various values of K,,: I, I&, = 0.0; 2, Kp, = 0.02; 3, Kp, = 0.04; 4, Kp, = 0.06; 5, Kp, = 0.08; 6,
K,,, = 0.10; 7, Kp, = 0.12.

Appendix C. Nomenclature
Area KP K
ACE, area control error of area i
1 0.08 0.02 ACENi new area control error of area i
2 0.1 0.02 Apt, i incremental change in aggregate tie-line
3 0.1 0.02 power of area i
4 0.2 0.06 AF, incremental frequency change of area i
Bi frequency bias constant of area i
152 C.S. Chang, W. Fu /Electric Power Systems Research 42 (1997) 145-152

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