In this paper, we propose a formal controller synthesis approach for integrating a population of plug-in electric vehicles in frequency regulation of power systems. This approach is the first application of formal methods to the smart grids in particular to the frequency regulation of power systems. We design and simulate a novel symbolic controller for the Great Britain power system. The proposed controller enhances the frequency response behaviour of the system when encountered with a large outage event. The symbolic controller guarantees the settlement of the after-event's frequency in the specified safe interval and ensures other requirements on the frequency are met.
Battery energy storage boosts up the response speed of power system frequency regulation, but must be recharged carefully to minimize the distortion to the frequency regulation response. This paper proposes a nonlinear feedback controller to optimize the recharge for storage resources in frequency regulation. This controller is designed using a data-driven best-hindsight optimization framework, the resulting nonlinear recharge controller's gain depends on the storage state of charge as well as its power and energy rating. The developed controller is compared with two benchmark automatic genera…
The suspension regulation is critical to the operation of medium-low-speed maglev trains (mlsMTs). Due to uncertain environment, strong disturbances and high nonlinearity of the system dynamics, this problem cannot be well solved by most of the model-based controllers. In this paper, we propose a model-free controller by reformulating it as a continuous-state, continuous-action Markov decision process (MDP) with unknown transition probabilities. With the deterministic policy gradient and neural network approximation, we design reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms to solve the MDP and obtain …
In this paper, a neural network predictive controller (NNPC) is proposed to control a buck converter. Conventional controllers such as proportional integral (PI) or proportional integral derivative (PID) are designed based on the linearized small signal model near the operating point. Therefore, the performance of the controller in the start up, load change, or reference change is not optimal since the system model changes by changing the operating point. The neural network predictive controller optimally controls the buck converter by following the concept of the traditional model predictive …
Fast and safe voltage regulation algorithms can serve as fundamental schemes for achieving a high level of renewable penetration in the modern distribution power grids. Faced with uncertain or even unknown distribution grid models and fast-changing power injections, model-free deep reinforcement learning (DRL) algorithms have been proposed to find the reactive power injections for inverters while optimizing the voltage profiles. However, such data-driven controllers can not guarantee satisfaction of the hard operational constraints, such as maintaining voltage profiles within a certain range o…
Declines in cost and concerns about the environmental impact of traditional generation have boosted the penetration of renewables and non-conventional distributed energy resources into the power grid. The intermittent availability of these resources causes the inertia of the power system to vary over time. As a result, there is a need to go beyond traditional controllers designed to regulate frequency under the assumption of invariant dynamics. This paper presents a learning-based framework for the design of stable controllers based on imitating datasets obtained from linear-quadratic regulato…
In this paper, we propose a novel four-stage distributed controller for a DC microgrid that achieves power sharing and average voltage regulation for the voltages at actuated and unactuated buses. The controller is presented for a DC microgrid comprising multiple distributed generating units (DGUs) with time-varying actuation states; dynamic RLC lines; nonlinear constant impedance, current and power (ZIP) loads and a time-varying network topology. The controller comprising a nonlinear gain, PI controllers, and two dynamic distributed averaging stages is designed for asymptotic stability. This …
In this paper, a dual heuristic programming controller is proposed to control a boost converter. Conventional controllers such as proportional integral derivative (PID) or proportional integral (PI) are designed based on the linearized small-signal model near the operating point. Therefore, the performance of the controller during start up, load change, or input voltage variation is not optimal since the system model changes by varying the operating point. The dual heuristic programming controller optimally controls the boost converter by following the approximate dynamic programming. The adva…
In this paper, we deal with the power regulation of tethered-wing systems and demonstrate advantages of variable-pitch control in mitigating the dynamic mechanical loads and power fluctuations. The proposed scheme is based on a strategy that maximizes the energy capture during low-speed wind and prevents overloads during the high-speed wind. To realize this strategy, we use a tether reeling-speed controller to track the optimal generator speed during low-speed wind and a MIMO speed-force controller for power limitation during high-speed wind. The controllers are synthesized using H-infinity me…
This paper developed a novel control approach for the sparse and safe frequency regulation for inverter intensive microgrids (MGs). In the scenario, the inverters and external grids are expected to reach a synchronized desired frequency under regulations. To this end, the active power set-point acting as a control from a high-level controller is designed while considering two important performance metrics "sparsity" and "safety", which are to reduce the information exchange between controllers and ensure that the frequency keeps in safety regions during the whole operation process. Our propose…
This paper proposes a novel extension of the Simplex architecture with model switching and model learning to achieve safe velocity regulation of self-driving vehicles in dynamic and unforeseen environments. To guarantee the reliability of autonomous vehicles, an $\mathcal{L}_{1}$ adaptive controller that compensates for uncertainties and disturbances is employed by the Simplex architecture as a verified safe controller to tolerate concurrent software and physical failures. Meanwhile, safe switching controller is incorporated into the Simplex for safe velocity regulation through the integration…
While the Artificial Pancreas is effective in regulating the blood glucose in the safe range of 70-180 mg/dl in type 1 diabetic patients, the high intra-patient variability, as well as exogenous meal disturbances, poses a serious challenge. The existing control algorithms thus require additional safety algorithms and feed-forward actions. Moreover, the unavailability of insulin sensors in Artificial Pancreas makes this task more difficult. In the present work, a subcutaneous model of type 1 diabetes (T1D) is considered for observer-based controller design in the framework of contraction analys…
Optimising wind turbine performance involves maximising energy harvesting while seeking to minimise load fatigues on the tower structure, blades and rotor. To improve turbine control performance, wind preview measurement technologies such as Light Detection And Ranging (LIDAR) have been a point of interest for researchers in recent years. In this paper, we explore the application of a classical control methodology known as Exact Output Regulation (EOR) for improving the control performance of a LIDAR-enhanced wind turbine. The EOR controller is designed to achieve the rejection of known input …
This paper proposes a disturbance observer-based control (DOBC) method for frequency and voltage regulation of a solar photovoltaic (PV)-diesel generator(DG) based hybrid microgrid during islanding conditions. The DOBC is integrated as a feed-forward control to the synchronous generator based DG, which handles real-time power mismatches and regulates the microgrid frequency and voltage under islanding. To substantiate the operational robustness of the developed controller under real-time uncertainties arising due to variability in PV output and load, the controller has been tested under worstc…
In this paper, we present a model-based frequency controller for microgrids with nonzero line resistances based on a port-Hamiltonian formulation of the microgrid model and real-time dynamic pricing. The controller is applicable for conventional generation with synchronous machines as well as for power electronics interfaced sources and it is robust against power fluctuations from uncontrollable loads or volatile regenerative sources. The price-based formulation allows additional requirements such as active power sharing to be met. The capability and effectiveness of our procedure is demonstra…
This study considers the problem of periodic event-triggered (PET) cooperative output regulation for a class of linear multi-agent systems. The advantage of the PET output regulation is that the data transmission and triggered condition are only needed to be monitored at discrete sampling instants. It is assumed that only a small number of agents can have access to the system matrix and states of the leader. Meanwhile, the PET mechanism is considered not only in the communication between various agents, but also in the sensor-to-controller and controller-to-actuator transmission channels for e…
This paper proposes a new strategy for optimal grid frequency regulation (FR) in an interconnected power system where regional ac grids and an offshore wind farm are linked via a multi-terminal high voltage direct-current (MTDC) network. In the proposed strategy, decentralized H-infinity controllers are developed to coordinate the operations of ac synchronous generators and hybrid MTDC converters, thus achieving optimal power sharing of interconnected ac grids and minimizing frequency deviations in each grid. To develop the controllers, robust optimization problems are formulated and solved us…
We investigate the problem of practical output regulation, i.e., to design a controller that brings the system output in the vicinity of a desired target value while keeping the other variables bounded. We consider uncertain systems that are possibly nonlinear and the uncertainty of their linear parts is modeled element-wise through a parametric family of matrix boxes. An optimization-based design procedure is proposed that delivers a continuous-time control and estimates the maximal regulation error. We also analyze an event-triggered emulation of this controller, which can be implemented on …
This paper considers the problem of regulating a linear dynamical system to the solution of a convex optimization problem with an unknown or partially-known cost. We design a data-driven feedback controller - based on gradient flow dynamics - that (i) is augmented with learning methods to estimate the cost function based on infrequent (and possibly noisy) functional evaluations; and, concurrently, (ii) is designed to drive the inputs and outputs of the dynamical system to the optimizer of the problem. We derive sufficient conditions on the learning error and the controller gain to ensure that …
High-voltage direct-current (HVDC) systems for constant or intermittent power delivery have recently been developed further to support grid frequency regulation (GFR). This paper proposes a new control strategy for a line-commutated converter-based (LCC) HVDC system, wherein the DC-link voltage and current are optimally regulated to improve real-time GFR in both rectifier- and inverter-side AC networks. A dynamic model of an LCC HVDC system is developed using the DC voltage and current as input variables, and is integrated with feedback loops for inertia emulation and droop control. A linear q…
This paper is concerned with the problem of controlling a system of constrained dynamic subsystems in a way that balances the performance degradation of decentralized control with the practical cost of centralized control. We propose a coalitional control scheme in which controllers of subsystems may, as the need arises, group together into coalitions and operate as a single entity. The scheme employs a robust form of distributed model predictive control for which recursive feasibility and stability are guaranteed, yet---uniquely---the reliance on robust invariant sets is merely implicit, thus…
This paper proposes a disturbance-observer-based control (DOBC) scheme for frequency and voltage regulation for a renewable energy sources (RES) integrated power systems. The proposed approach acts a feed-forward control which improves the dynamic performance of the conventional proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller. Robustness of the proposed control scheme has been validated through simulations under worst-case and stochastic uncertainties to mitigate real-time variability in RES output and load. The performance of the proposed control technique is compared to well established te…
This paper introduces a control strategy to simultaneously achieve asymptotic stabilization and transient frequency regulation of power networks. The control command is generated by iteratively solving an open-loop control cost minimization problem with stability and transient frequency constraints. To deal with the non-convexity of the stability constraint, we propose a convexification strategy that uses a reference trajectory based on the system's current state. We also detail how to employ network partitions to implement the proposed control strategy in a distributed way, where each region …
Motivated by the inadequacy of the existing control strategies for power systems affected by time-varying uncontrolled power injections such as loads and the increasingly widespread renewable energy sources, this paper proposes two control schemes based on the well-known output regulation control methodology. The first one is designed based on the classical output regulation theory and addresses the so-called Load Frequency Control (LFC) problem in presence of time-varying uncontrolled power injections. Then, in order to also minimize the generation costs, we use an approximate output regulati…
