A Control Architecture for Fast Frequency Regulation with Increasing Penetration of Inverter Based Resources

TL;DR

This paper introduces a two-layer control architecture combining optimized droop, VSM, and MPC for fast frequency regulation in power systems with high inverter-based renewable penetration, ensuring constraint-aware coordination and effective regulation.

Contribution

It presents an integrated control framework that embeds MPC within existing grid control structures, utilizing reduced-order modeling and estimation for improved frequency regulation.

Findings

Effective frequency regulation demonstrated with real data from Saudi Arabia.

Constraint-aware coordination improves system stability.

Reduced-order models enable real-time control implementation.

Abstract

This paper addresses frequency regulation under operational constraints in interconnected power systems with high penetration of inverter-based renewable generation. A two-layer control architecture is proposed that combines optimized droop and Virtual Synchronous Machine (VSM) primary control with a Model Predictive Control (MPC) secondary layer operating at realistic control-room update rates. Unlike recent proposed approaches, the proposed framework integrates MPC within existing grid control structures, enabling constraint-aware coordination. A reduced-order frequency response model is systematically derived from a high-fidelity grid model using Hankel singular values, and a reduced-order Kalman-Bucy observer enables state and disturbance estimation using only measurable outputs. Validation using representative data from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia demonstrates effective frequency regulation under realistic operating conditions.