Robust synchronization of electric power generators

TL;DR

This paper presents a robust control method for synchronizing two electric power generators with a leader-follower setup, ensuring stable connection despite disturbances and load variations, using reduced-order observers and ISS robustness.

Contribution

It introduces a new synchronization procedure leveraging reduced-order observers with ISS robustness for power generators with load variations and measurement disturbances.

Findings

Explicit bounds on synchronization error are derived.

Numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Abstract

We consider the problem of synchronizing two electric power generators, one of which (the leader) is serving a time-varying electrical load, so that they can ultimately be connected to form a single power system. Each generator is described by a second-order reduced state-space model. We assume that the generator not serving an external load initially (the follower) has access to measurements of the leader's phase angle, corrupted by some additive disturbances. By using these measurements, and leveraging results on reduced-order observers with ISS-type robustness, we propose a procedure that drives (i) the angular velocity of the follower close enough to that of the leader, and (ii) the phase angle of the follower close enough to that of the point at which both systems will be electrically connected. An explicit bound on the synchronization error in terms of the measurement disturbance and the variations in the electrical load served by the leader is computed. We illustrate the procedure via numerical simulations.