Distributed Generation Based WADC for Inter-Area Oscillations Considering Unknown Inputs

Inter-area oscillations (IAOs) are one of the main problems for contemporary power systems because of their low-damping characteristics. Additionally, the damping behaviors of IAOs might be further deteriorated by the addition of low inertial distributed generation (DG) to the power system. Therefore, a novel wide-area damping controller (WADC) for DG-integrated power systems is developed utilizing a modal linear quadratic regulator (LQR) technique that only targets essential IAOs without degrading other local modes. The states participated in linear combination from modal LQR are generally unavailable and need to be estimated. Full order observers are frequently used in literature, although they may not function if some inputs are unavailable. Hence, an unknown input observer (UIO) is suggested in this paper to estimate the states despite certain inputs being unknown. The proposed methodology is then tested on a DG-integrated 4-machine, 11-bus system and 10-machine, 39-bus system to validate the overall proposed design process. Results show that the proposed WADC successfully dampens the crucial IAO modes by 10% and 15% while not degrading other modes of the system.