Improved steady-state stability of power grids with a communication infrastructure

Efficient control of power systems is becoming increasingly difficult as they gain in complexity and size. We propose an automatic control strategy that regulates the mechanical power output of the generators in a power grid based on information obtained via a communication infrastructure. An algorithm that optimizes steady-state stability of a power grid by iteratively adding communication links is presented. The proposed control scheme is successfully applied to the IEEE New England and IEEE RTS 96 power systems, leading to a significant increase in the steady-state stability of the systems and an improvement in their overall robustness. The resulting communication network topology differs significantly from the transmission grid topology. This shows how complex the steady- state control for power systems is, influenced by the generators configuration, the transmission network topology, and the manner by which control is executed.