Novel Optimal Load Control for Power System Frequency and Voltage Regulation

The sudden generation-consumption imbalance is becoming more frequent in modern power systems, causing voltage and frequency stability issues. One potential solution is load participation in primary control. We formulate a novel optimal load control (NOLC) problem that aims to minimize the disutility of controllable loads in providing primary regulation. In this paper, we show that the network dynamics, coupled with well-defined load control (obtained via optimality condition), can be seen as an optimization algorithm to solve the dual problem of NOLC. Unlike most existing load control frameworks that only consider frequency response, our load-side primary control focuses on frequency, voltage, and aggregate cost. Simulation results imply that the NOLC approach can ensure better frequency and voltage regulations. Moreover, the coordination between NOLC and other devices enabled in the system, the NOLC performance against the total size of controllable loads, and the NOLC effectiveness in a multi-machine power system are also verified in MATLAB/Simulink.