Predictive Control for Real-Time Frequency Regulation and Rotational Inertia Provision in Power Systems

This paper presents real-time optimal control schemes for regulating grid frequency and providing rotational inertia in power systems, two control problems with fast dynamics on the time-scale of milliseconds. Both control problems have received wide attention in recent years due to rising shares of variable renewable energy sources (RES) and the thereby arising challenges for power system operation. The presented control schemes are based on explicit model predictive control (MPC), which allows to directly incorporate operational constraints of power system units, i.e. ramp-rate, power rating and energy constraints, and to achieve real-time tractability while keeping the online computation effort low. Simulations, including a performance comparison with traditional frequency control, are presented.