Jose A. Solano-Castellanos

Jose A. Solano-Castellanos, Hassan Haes Alhelou, Ali T. Al- Awami et al.

This paper addresses frequency regulation under operational constraints in interconnected power systems with high penetration of inverter-based renewable generation. A two-layer control architecture is proposed that combines optimized droop and Virtual Synchronous Machine (VSM) primary control with a Model Predictive Control (MPC) secondary layer operating at realistic control-room update rates. Unlike recent proposed approaches, the proposed framework integrates MPC within existing grid control structures, enabling constraint-aware coordination. A reduced-order frequency response model is systematically derived from a high-fidelity grid model using Hankel singular values, and a reduced-order Kalman-Bucy observer enables state and disturbance estimation using only measurable outputs. Validation using representative data from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia demonstrates effective frequency regulation under realistic operating conditions.

Jose A. Solano-Castellanos, Peter A. Fisher, Anuradha Annaswamy

This manuscript considers the problem of ensuring stability and safety during formation control with distributed multi-agent systems in the presence of parametric uncertainty in the dynamics and limited communication. We propose an integrative approach that combines Adaptive Control, Control Barrier Functions (CBFs), and connected graphs. The main elements employed in the integrative approach are an adaptive control design that ensures stability, a CBF-based safety filter that generates safe commands based on a reference model dynamics, and a reference model that ensures formation control with multi-agent systems when no uncertainties are present. The overall control design is shown to lead to a closed-loop adaptive system that is stable, avoids unsafe regions, and converges to a desired formation of the multi-agents. Numerical examples are provided to support the theoretical derivations.