IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution

Research Article

Inter-area oscillation damping with non- ISSN 1751-8687

Received on 14th October 2017
Revised 14th March 2018
synchronised wide-area power system Accepted on 17th March 2018
E-First on 4th May 2018
stabiliser doi: 10.1049/iet-gtd.2017.0017
www.ietdl.org

Abhilash Patel1, Sandip Ghosh2 , Komla A. Folly3

1Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India
2Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi, India
3Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

E-mail: sghosh@eee.iitbhu.ac.in

Abstract: One of the major issues in an interconnected power system is the low damping of inter-area oscillations which
significantly reduces the power transfer capability. A speed deviation-based wide-area power system stabiliser (WAPSS) is
known to be effective in damping inter-area modes which use feedback from remote locations. However, the involvement of
wide-area signals gives rise to the problem of time delay, which may degrade the system performance. The delay in
synchronised and non-synchronised feedback to WAPSS can have alternate performances. The effect of delays in such
WAPSS with two types of feedback is studied and controllers are synthesised using the H∞ control with regional pole placement
to ensure adequate dynamic performance. To show the effectiveness of the proposed approach, two power system models have
been used for the simulations. It is shown that the controllers designed based on the non-synchronised signals are more robust
to time-delay variations than the controllers using the synchronised signal.

1 Introduction varying operating conditions. With the help of modern control

Modern interconnected power systems are very large and span over
a wide geographical area. Consequently, they inherit complex non-
linear dynamics, which are poorly damped. As a result, any
changes in operating conditions may lead to electromechanical
oscillations. Generally, power system oscillations have multiple
modes owing to the large-scale and interconnected dynamics. Such
oscillations affect power system stability and performances.
Usually, the inherent damping of the system is not adequate to
mitigate the oscillations.
The oscillations are characterised through the swing modes of
the system and these can be categorised as local and inter-area
modes [1]. For local modes, either an individual or a group of
machines within an area oscillates against another individual or a
group of machines from the same area. On the other hand, for inter-
area modes, a group of machines from an area oscillates against a
group of machines from another area, usually connected over a
weak tie-line. The local modes have a stronger impact on the states
of local-area machines and, hence, these can be effectively damped
using local signals and controllers, such as using local power
system stabilisers (PSSs). On the contrary, the inter-area modes
involving multiple areas are difficult to control using only local
signals. It may also happen that the inter-area modes are better
controllable from one area but better observable in different area
signals [2]. This raises the issue of wide-area control of the inter-
area modes using signals from different areas.
The limitation on the availability of feedback signals from
different areas is somewhat relaxed with the deployment of wide-
area measurement systems over wide geographical areas, and
remote signals are now available for feedback in order to realise
wide-area PSS (WAPSS). Using both the local and remote signals
as feedback to the controller, the inter-area modes can be better
damped. It has also been reported that WAPSS takes 4–20 times
lesser control effort to adequately damp inter-area modes compared
to local PSS [3].
Several studies in the literature have explored the benefits of
using WAPSSs. In fact, several design methods have been
proposed for designing WAPSSs. A phase compensating lead–lag
compensator has been designed as WAPSSs [4, 5]. Such a design is
simple and easy to implement, but it performs non-uniformly under
theory, adaptive and robust controllers have been designed to
address the above robustness problem [6–14]. Adaptive-WAPSS
uses an online estimation of system parameters and computes the
control law adaptively as in [9, 11, 13]. Robust control methods
have unique superiority in dealing with the uncertainty in system
parameters and external perturbations. To cope with bounded
operating conditions, robust control theory comes as an effective
tool for controller synthesis. A linear-quadratic-Gaussian controller
has been used in [10, 15] along with a loop transfer recovery
scheme to achieve guaranteed robustness. H∞ loop shaping
approach along with regional pole placement has been proposed for
wide-area controller design in [14]. In [12, 16], the design of
H2 /H∞ mixed-sensitivity controller with regional pole placement
criterion has been designed. Here, the controller is synthesised to
minimise weighted sensitivity with critical modes of the closed-
loop system placed in a pre-specified region in the left-half
complex plane ensuring certain dynamic performance.
Though the use of wide-area signals provides better dynamic
behaviour, the involvement of remote signal introduces challenges
such as time delay in the process of acquiring the remote signals.
Such time delay in the system may reduce the damping or even
lead to instability [17, 18]. The time delay can be compensated
using predictor approach [19, 20], adding phase lead [21] or
developing a stochastic time-delay expectation model approach
[22]. The control gain can also be tuned by exploiting the trade-off
between delay margin and damping [23]. However, the design
methods lack the robustness to time-varying delay or are
computationally expensive.
One important issue while employing speed-based WAPSSs
that use the speed difference between machines from different
areas as feedback signals is whether to use synchronised signals or
not. It has been shown that there exists a feedback configuration
which can enhance the delay tolerability by better utilising the
local signal (non-synchronised signal) than using the synchronised
one [18]. In this work, the robustness of delay has been analysed
based on the small-signal model through computation of
eigenvalues for delay systems. However, the work in [18] does not
deal with WAPSSs synthesis. Often, advanced controller designs,
such as a H∞ controller, may not yield the same performance as it

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 2.1 System with synchronised and non-synchronised
feedback
A system with two-loop wide-area control structure using PSS is
shown in Fig. 1. It may be noted that the inter-area oscillation is
well observed through the speed difference of the ith and jth
generators from the two different areas (i.e. Δωi j = Δωi − Δω j, Δω
representing the speed deviation) [5]. However, in order to
facilitate the synchronisation for better observation, an equal
amount of delays are introduced in the synchronised signals as
shown in Fig. 1a, whereas if the two signals are used without
synchronisation as shown in Fig. 1b then the delay in the local
signal Δωi is negligible.
To incorporate the above two configurations in the system
model, consider the linearised power system model:

ẋ p = Ap xp + Bww + Bpup,
yp = Cp xp, (1)
z = Cz xp + Dzw,

where xp is the state, up is the wide-area control signal fed to the

exciter, yp is the measured output considered here as wide-area
signals, z is the desired output for which the controller design
performance is chosen, Ap, Bw, Bp, Cz, Dz, Cp are time-invariant
matrices of appropriate dimension. The WAPSS controller
dynamics is considered as

ẋc = Ac xc + Bcuc,
(2)
yc = Cc xc,

where xc is the state of the controller, uc is the wide-area feedback

to the controller, delayed or non-delayed ones as the case will be, yc
Fig. 1  Configuration for WAPSS is the control signal fed to the system (1), i.e. up, Ac, Bc, Cc are the
(a) Synchronised WAPSS, (b) Non-synchronised WAPSS controller matrices to be designed. The plant and controller transfer
functions can be written as Gp(s) = Cp(s)(sI − Ap)−1Bp and
is observed through analysis due to their inherent conservativeness Gc(s) = Cc(s)(sI − Ac)−1Bc, respectively.
(lack of existence of necessary and sufficient conditions). For controller design, time-delay present in the remote signal is
Therefore, comparing the designed controller performances for modelled with second-order Pade approximation. A discussion on
synchronised and non-synchronised use of feedback signals in the second-order modelling of the delay is presented in the next
speed-based WAPSSs is important. section. The state-space model of the Pade-approximated delay
In this paper, the design of speed-based WAPSSs is carried out term is as
employing the second-order Pade approximation of the delay. The
WAPSS is designed for the following cases: (i) not considering the ẋd = Ad xd + Bdud,
delay in the design and (ii) considering the delay in the design. The (3)
H∞ control design method with regional pole placement is yd = Cd xd + Dd yd,
employed for the controller design. The effect of time delay for
synchronised and non-synchronised feedback using non-linear where ud is the wide-area signal without delay, xd is states of the
simulations is demonstrated. It is shown through comparison that approximated delay model, yd is the delayed wide-area feedback to
the design presented in this paper also corroborates the analysis the controller, and constant matrices Ad, Bd, Cd and Dd are given as
carried out in [18]. Two case studies, the two-area system and the follows:
New England system, are considered for demonstrating the
effectiveness of the designed WAPSSs. 0 1
The paper is organised as follows. The following section 0
Ad = −12 6 , Bd = ,
introduces the control problem formulation for both synchronised Td 1
T d2
and non-synchronised configurations. Section 3 presents the
simulation results where WAPSSs are designed for the two-area Cd = 0 −T d , Dd = 1 ,
four-machines IEEE benchmark model. In Section 4, the results for
a ten-machine New England system, a larger system with multiple where T d is the time delay.
inter-area modes, are tested. Section 5 presents the conclusion of Next, (1)–(3) are used to represent the closed-loop system
this paper. structures corresponding to the synchronised and the non-
synchronised configurations of Fig. 1.
2 Control problem formulation Synchronised Feedback: For synchronised feedback in Fig. 1a,
both the local and the remote signals are time-synchronised and,
This section presents the synchronised and the non-synchronised therefore, an equal amount of delays are introduced in both the
feedback configurations for speed-based WAPSSs. The signals. The state-space representation of the closed-loop system is
corresponding system models used for WAPSS design are as
presented.
ẋ = As x + Bww,
z = Cz xp + Dzw,

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 W 1S
∥ ∥ ≤ γ, (5)
W 2T ∞

where W 1 and W 2 are suitable weight functions that provide the

flexibility of exploring the frequency-weighted design trade-off
between S and T. Usually W 1 is chosen as a low-pass filter, whereas
W 2 is chosen as a high-pass filter.

Fig. 2  Feedback control structure for controller design 2.2.2 Regional pole placement: While H∞ control addresses the
T frequency-domain specifications in terms of disturbance rejection
where x = xTp xdT xcT and and robustness effectively but it lacks control over the transient
performance. The desired response can be achieved by forcing the
Ap 0 BpCc closed-loop poles to be placed in a pre-specified linear matrix
As = BdCp Ad 0 . inequality (LMI) region. Moreover, since damping improvement is
the main concern here, one should ensure that the minimum
Bc DdCp BcCd Ac damping ratio required is met at the design stage.
One can describe a region in the complex plane with LMI
Non-synchronised feedback: For non-synchronised feedback in equations [25]. A conical sector is constructed as per minimum
Fig. 1b, the local signal is used as it is without time delay. So the damping requirement (cos 2θ = ζ, ζ is the damping factor and θ is
delay is observed only in the remote signal. Consider the inner angle in the complex plane). The characteristic function
T
Cp = ClT CrT , Cl and Cr correspond to local and remote signals, of the conic sector with the apex at the origin and inner angle of 2θ
respectively. Similarly, the state-space representation of the closed- can be expressed as
loop system can be written as
sin θ(v + v̄) cos θ(v − v̄)
f D(v) = ,
ẋ = Ans x + Bww, cos θ(v̄ − v) sin θ(v + v̄)
z = Cz xp + Dzw,
where v represents the pole location and v̄ is its complex conjugate.
T By exploiting this characteristic function, the regional pole
where x = xTp xdT xcT and placement along with the H∞ control can be carried out in multi-
objective output feedback framework [26] as given in Theorem 1.
Ap 0 BpCc  
Ans = BdCr Ad 0 . Theorem 1: Given a constant γ > 0 and a linear time-invariant
plant (1), there exists an output feedback controller (2), such that
BcCl + Bc DdCr BcCd Ac ∥ T zw |∞ ≤ γ and all its closed-loop eigenvalues resides in the
region in left-half plane with conical sector with inner angle 2θ and
As the inter-area oscillations are well observable in the difference
apex at origin, if there exist symmetric matricesR and S, matrices
of the speed deviation of two machines from the different areas, ^ ^ ^
one can opt for the performance measure, z, to be as Δωi j with A, B, C, satisfying the below LMI constraints:
suitable weight augmentation.
Φ1 ∗ ∗ ∗
^
2.2 Controller design A + A′ Φ2 ∗ ∗
<0 (6)
The H∞ controller design with regional pole placement is used in Bw′ RBw′ −γI ∗
this work for comparison of controller performances for non- CzS Cz Dz −γI
synchronised and synchronised signals. The controller design
method is presented next. sin θ(Φ3 + Φ′3) cos θ(Φ3 − Φ′3)
<0 (7)
cos θ(Φ′3 − Φ3) sin θ(Φ′3 + Φ3)
2.2.1 H∞ control: A block diagram representation of robust
control problem is presented in Fig. 2. Here, Gp is the system as in S I
(1) which is to be controlled with the Gc as in (2) in the presence of >0 (8)
I R
disturbance (d) and noise (n).
From Fig. 2, the output y can be written as where

y = (1 − GpGc)−1Gpd + GpGc(1 − GpGc)−1n, (4) Φ1 = AS + SA′ + BC + (BC)′

^ ^

^ ^
where (1 − GpGc)−1 is called the sensitivity function S and Φ2 = A′R + RA + BC + (BC)′
^
GpGc(1 − GpGc)−1 is the complementary sensitivity function T [24]. AS + BC A
To have a good disturbance rejection S should be small over a Φ3 = ^ ^

frequency range where disturbance rejection is required, whereas T A RA + BC

should be small to attenuate noise at the frequency range where ^ ^ ^
noise attenuation is required. However, T and S are complimentary As the matricesA, B, C, R, S are present affinely in the above
to each other since S + T = 1. It is well known that the inequalities, it can be solved with an LMI solver. Once these
disturbances are of low frequency in nature whereas noises are of matrices are obtained, the controller (2) can be constructed using
high frequency. With the help of frequency-dependent weights, one the following equation:
can set an objective exploring their trade-off.
^
Considering H∞ gain as the performance measure (∥ ⋅ ∥∞ is A = SAp R + SBpCcU T + VBcCp R + V AcU T ,
the H∞ norm of the transfer function, i.e. the supremum of its ^ ^
B = VBc, C = CcU T
largest singular value over frequency, denoted as γ∞), one can
define the performance requirement as [24]
for matrices U and V satisfying UV T = I − RS.

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Fig. 3  Four-machine 11-bus study system [1]
Based on the synchronised or non-synchronised feedback
considered, the plant (1) and the corresponding controller (2) can
be considered and designed. It may be noted that the delay model
(3) is augmented to the plant dynamics appropriately based on
whether it is considered in the design or not.
 
Remark 1: There are possibilities that the LMI condition in
Theorem 1 may yield infeasible solution if the design is subjected
to hard design constraints. Approaches to handling the situation are
(i) to relax the imposed design constraints (e.g. reducing the
desired damping value), (ii) to find the achievable performance
posing the problem as an optimisation problem (maximising
damping factor). However, for the case studies carried out in this
work, we could obtain feasible solutions for several different
damping factor values.
Next, we present two case studies comparing the designs for
synchronised and non-synchronised WAPSSs with particular
emphasis on the effect of delay variations.
3 Case study I
The IEEE benchmark two-area system developed for the study of
inter-area oscillations [1] is first used to demonstrate the proposed
WAPSS design procedure and its effectiveness. The system as
shown in Fig. 3 consists of 11 buses and 4 generators where two
areas are connected by a weak tie-line. Each area of the system
contains two generators equipped with local PSSs at G1 and G3 to
provide sufficient damping to the local modes. The nominal system
parameters and operating point without any wide-area control are
considered as in [1, 27].
The system is modelled in MATLAB-Simulink and linearised
around an operating point of 400 MW tie-line transfer. The
linearised model is obtained as 58th order. The modes of the
system are then studied with modal analysis. Three modes
M1, M2, M3 are identified as the swing modes with
M1 : − 0.316 ± j3.91 being the inter-area mode having poor
Fig. 4  Responses for full order and reduced order controller with and without time delay
(a) Δω24 variation: short dashed line – without WAPSS, dash-dotted line – with full-order WAPSS, long dashed line – with WAPSS reduced order, (b)Δω12 variation: short dashed
line – without WAPSS, dash-dotted line – with full-order WAPSS, long dashed line with WAPSS reduced order, (c) Δω24 variation for different delays (T d) in wide-area loop, (d)
Δω24 variation for different time-delays (T d) in remote signal
IET Gener. Transm. Distrib., 2018, Vol. 12 Iss. 12, pp. 3070-3078
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damping. The wide-area loop is selected based on the geometric
measure for loop-selection corresponding to the inter-area mode.
Through the geometrical measures as in [28], Δω24 is chosen for
the feedback signal to the controller and G4 is selected as the
WAPSS location. As the model is of a large order, it is reduced to
an 8th order model. Note that, reduced-order model retains the
inter-area mode M1 and a local mode M3 of the original system, but
loses M2.
3.1 WAPSS synthesis (without considering delay)
The controller is designed using the reduced-order model without
considering the delay in the feedback. The controller is synthesised
using the procedure described in Section 2. The weight functions
10 100s
are selected as W 1 = (s + 10) , W 2 = (s + 10) . To improve the damping
of the inter-area mode, a conical region is selected for the pole
placement with a minimum damping ratio of 0.2. The designed
controller is of tenth order due to extra states from weight
functions, which is further reduced to a fifth order using the Hankel
norm reduction technique [24]. From the small-signal analysis, the
inter-area mode with WAPSS is found to be −1.02 ± j3.91.
Therefore, the damping ratio is improved from 0.08 to 0.253.
Next, the WAPSS is validated through nonlinear simulations by
applying a pulse change of 0.05 pu as a disturbance to the voltage
reference of G2. The effectiveness of both the full-order and the
reduced-order controllers are shown in Fig. 4a in terms of speed
deviations. Without the wide-area loop, speed deviation is taking
more than 10 s to settle down which is undesirable according to
IEEE guidelines [29]. With the designed wide-area controller, it
can be seen that the inter-area oscillation damps out quickly as
compared to the case without wide-area control. From Fig. 4a, it
can be seen that the reduced-order controller works as well as the
full-order controller. Therefore, the reduced-order controller can be
used which is relatively easier to implement. It is also observed
that the controller in area 2 has no counter effect on M2 which can
be seen from variation in the local mode of area 1 in Fig. 4b.
Next, to study the effect of the delay, the system is simulated for
different delays in the wide-area loop. A detailed linear analysis of
the effect of the delay considering both the synchronised and non-
synchronised signals has been investigated in [18]. First,
considering delays in the synchronised feedback, it can be seen
from Fig. 4c that damping reduces and the system becomes
unstable even for small delays.
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Fig. 5  Performance comparison of synchronized and non-synchronized WAPSS with different time delays
(a) Δω24 variation: short dashed line – without WAPSS, dash-dotted line – with synchronised WAPSS, long dashed line – with non-synchronised WAPSS, (b) Δω12 variation: short
dashed line – without WAPSS, dash-dotted line – with synchronised WAPSS, long dashed line – with non-synchronised WAPSS, (c) Δω34 variation with synchronised WAPSS for
different delays (T d), (d) Δω24 variation with synchronised WAPSS for different delays (T d)

Fig. 6  Responses for the non-synchronised controller with different delays

(a) Δω24 plots the non-synchronised WAPSS for multiple delays, (b) Δω34 plots the non-synchronised WAPSS for multiple delays

Now, considering the non-synchronised feedback where the
delay is present only in the remote signal, simulation responses are
shown in Fig. 4d. It can be seen that the damping reduces as the
delay is increased. However, as compared to the synchronised
feedback, the delay has a lesser destabilising effect.
3.2 WAPSS synthesis (considering the delay)
From the above study, the importance of considering the delay
during the design stage is apparent. The controller is now designed
considering a reasonable 200 ms delay, following the procedure in
Section 2. First, consider synchronised feedback configuration,
where an equal amount of delays are introduced in both the local
and the remote signals. Responses to the disturbance are shown in
Fig. 5a. It can be seen that the oscillations die out within 10 s of
disturbance occurrence.
Next, the controller is designed for non-synchronised feedback.
From the linear analysis, it is found that the damping of inter-area
mode has improved from 0.08 to 0.255. The speed deviation
responses to the disturbance are shown in Figs. 5a and b. The
oscillations due to the inter-area mode die out within four cycles of
operation. The effect of WAPSS on the local mode of area 1 can be
seen in Fig. 5b. The WAPSS still marginally improves its damping.
To evaluate the performance, different delays are now
considered for both the synchronised and the non-synchronised
cases. The controllers are designed considering 200 ms time delay
and the performances are evaluated for 50, 200 and 500 ms time
delays. For synchronised feedback, though the system retains
stability for different delays the performance of the controller
3074
degrades for the local mode. One can observe from Fig. 5c that
oscillations take more time to settle down when the delay is other
than 200 ms. However, the variation in the delay has a less
significant effect on the inter-area modes as shown in Fig. 5d.
The performance of the non-synchronised WAPSS is also
evaluated for the same time delays. It can be seen that the
controller performs well for 500 ms delay although the controller is
designed for 200 ms delay as shown in Fig. 6a. However, system
performance improves if the delay is less than 200 ms, which is
other way in the case of the synchronised WAPSS. The delay in the
remote signal, have the same effect on the local mode of area 2 as
shown in Fig. 6b. Local oscillations settle down very quickly
compared to the synchronised WAPSS.
4 Case study-II
The 10 machine, 39 bus benchmark system as shown in Fig. 7 [30]
is considered next with the local PSSs settings as chosen in [31].
The generators G1–G9 are equipped with local PSSs. The non-linear
system model is constructed in MATLAB-Simulink and linearised
around the operating point. From the modal analysis, it is found
that three inter-area modes are present in the system as given in
Table 1. The modes ℳ2 and ℳ3 have low damping but have a
relatively larger frequency compared to ℳ1. Hence, we only
consider the damping improvement ℳ1 (−0.28 ± j3.92) through
WAPSS. Using geometrical measure, Δω10, 4 is chosen as the output
signal, and the input of G4 is selected for the WAPSS site. The
linearised system model is of 96th order, which leads to larger
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Fig. 7  10-machine 39-bus (New England) system [30]
computation time and has implementation issue with the full-order
H∞ controller. So the system model is reduced to a sixth-order one
by means of Hankel norm reduction technique. Note that, the
reduced order model retains the ℳ1 mode.
4.1 WAPSS synthesis (without considering the delay)
The WAPSS is first designed without considering the delay, as in
Section 2. With the designed WAPSS, the closed-loop location of
the inter-area mode ℳ1 is found to be −1.10 ± j3.91. Therefore,
the damping of the mode is improved from 0.07 to 0.271. Also, the
performance of the WAPSS is evaluated through nonlinear
simulation with a 0.2 s pulse disturbance of 0.05 magnitude applied
at the G4 terminal's voltage reference. As inter-area oscillation can
be observed in the difference of speed deviation between G10 and
G4, the response of this is shown in Fig. 8a. It can be seen that the
oscillations are damped within the desired time compared to the
Table 1 Low-frequency modes of the system without
WAPSS
Mode Mode shape Frequency, Hz Damping
M1 G10 versus G1 − G9 0.6236
M2 G1, G8, G9 versus G4 − G8 1.04
M3 G2, G3 versus G4, G5 0.96
Fig. 8  Performance of WAPSS with and without time delay
(a) Δω10, 4 variation: short dashed line – without WAPSS, dashed line with WAPSS, (b)Δω5, 4 variation: long short dashed line – without the WAPSS, dashed line – with the WAPSS,
(c) Δω10, 4 variation for different delays (T d) in synchronised feedback, (d) Δω10, 4 variation for different delays (T d) in non-synchronised feedback
IET Gener. Transm. Distrib., 2018, Vol. 12 Iss. 12, pp. 3070-3078
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2018
case without the wide-area controller, whereas the WAPSS has no
counter effect on the local modes as shown in Fig. 8b.
To study the effect of delay in the wide-area loop, a set of
delays are now considered. The effect of delay in the synchronised
configuration can be seen in Fig. 8c. The damping becomes poorer
with an increase in the delay and finally becomes unstable with the
delay larger than 500 ms. Next, the delays are considered in the
non-synchronised configuration and the corresponding responses
are shown in Fig. 8d. It can be seen that the non-synchronised
configuration can tolerate more delay compared with the
synchronised case since the system remains stable even when the
delay is increased to 1 s. However, damping reduces with increase
in the delay. From the study, it can be concluded that the effect of
the delay has to be considered while designing the controller.
4.2 WAPSS synthesis (considering the delay)
The WAPSSs are designed considering a delay of 500 ms in the
synchronised and non-synchronised feedback. With the
synchronised WAPSS, the inter-area mode is found to be
−0.942 ± j3.87. Therefore, the damping is increased from 0.07 to
0.236. The performance of the designed controller is validated
using nonlinear simulations where a 0.2 p.u pulse disturbance is
applied to G4 . The variations in the speed deviation differences are
shown in Figs. 9a and b, where it can be seen that the oscillations
settle down quickly. Next, with non-synchronised WAPSS the
inter-area mode is found out to be −1.03 ± j3.64. Therefore,
damping of the inter-area mode is improved from 0.07 to 0.273. A
disturbance is added as in the previous case to validate the
controller performance. The responses to the disturbance in terms
of speed deviation difference are shown in Figs. 9a and b along
with the synchronised feedback. One can observe that with the
non-synchronised WAPSS, the oscillations of both the local and
inter-area modes settle down within 10 s. Therefore, the non-
synchronised WAPSS performs better than the synchronised one.
Next, to evaluate the performances of the synchronised and the
non-synchronised WAPSSs, different delays are considered. As the
controller is designed with 500 ms delay, three different delay
situations (300, 500 and 700 ms) are considered. The simulation
results with these delays are shown in Figs. 10a–d.
It can be seen that with an increase in the delay, the damping
0.0705 reduces but the effect is more prominent in local modes. With
0.0703 synchronised WAPSS, though the system retains stability for both
the change in the delay, the performance degrades significantly. For
0.0691
the delay less than the value used during the design, settling time
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Fig. 9  Speed deviation responses for nonlinear simulations
(a) Δω5, 4 variation: short dashed line – without WAPSS, dash-dotted line – with synchronised WAPSS, long dashed line – with non-synchronised WAPSS, (b) Δω10, 4 variation: short
dashed line – without WAPSS, dash-dotted line – with synchronised WAPSS, long dashed line – with non-synchronised WAPSS

Fig. 10  Performance comparison of Synchronized and non-synchronized WAPSS with different time delays
(a) Δω5, 4 variation for synchronised WAPSS for different delays (T d), (b) Δω10, 4 variation for synchronised WAPSS for different delays (T d), (c) Δω5, 4 variation for non-
synchronised WAPSS for different delays, (d) Δω10, 4 variation with non-synchronised WAPSS for different delays

has increased but it stays less than 10 s and for the delay larger than
500 ms a faster mode of low magnitude has been observed in speed
deviations. The same effect has been observed in inter-area
oscillations also. For the non-synchronised case, no such effect is
observed. As the delay is not present in the local signal, change in
the delay has no significant effect on the local mode. However, for
the delay less than 500 ms, the system performance is better for the
inter-area oscillation.
Besides the comparisons presented so far in the case studies I
and II, another feature of non-synchronised WAPSS is the reduced
sensitivity to the delay variations. If the delay is varied from 0.1 to
1 s, the variations in the gain and the phase of the sensitivity
function (computed as (4), where Gp(s) = Gp0(s)Gd(s), Gp0(s)
represents the nominal power system model and Gd(s) is the delay
approximated with second-order Pade model) are much more for
the synchronised feedback than the non-synchronised WAPSS as
shown in Fig. 11. For designing damping controllers, phase
compensation plays an important role, and in the case of the
synchronised feedback with the delay variation, the phase spectrum
is wider compared with the non-synchronised feedback which
results in inferior performance for the synchronised WAPSS in the
presence of the delay.
feedback configuration can be structured in synchronised or non-
synchronised fashion. Considering these two configurations at the
design stage, the performance of the designed controllers has been
investigated in this paper. It has been shown that the designed
controllers are effective to fetch the benefits of the non-
synchronised configuration shown in earlier work [18]. The
WAPSS has been designed in the framework of the H∞ control
with the regional pole placement. The effect of the delay on the
performance of the WAPSS has been investigated while
considering the second-order Pade approximation of the delay in
the design procedure. The effectiveness of the controller has been
validated with two case studies. It has been shown that the non-
synchronised WAPSS performed better compared with the
synchronised WAPSS while considering the robustness towards the
delay variations.
 Acknowledgment
This work was based on the research supported in parts by the
National Research Foundation of South Africa UID 85503 and the
Central Power Research Institute, India.

5 Conclusion
Damping improvement of inter-area modes through a wide-area
controller, particularly through WAPSS, has been discussed in this
paper. For such WAPSS, when speed information is used, the

3076 IET Gener. Transm. Distrib., 2018, Vol. 12 Iss. 12, pp. 3070-3078
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2018
Fig. 11  Sensitivity of the closed-loop system for variations in the delay value for
(a) Four-machine (case study I), (b) Ten-machine system (case study II)

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IET Gener. Transm. Distrib., 2018, Vol. 12 Iss. 12, pp. 3070-3078 3077
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2018
and the complexity arises with bilinearity in AT P + PA or PB. 7.2 System parameters for the case studies and designed
S V R U controllers
Let P = T and P−1 = T , where S and R are
V ∗ U ∗ For case-studies I and II, the system parameters are adopted from
symmetric matrices of appropriate dimensions. As PP−1 = I, so it an IEEE Taskforce report on Benchmark Systems for Small-Signal
can be said as Stability Analysis and Control [27]. The controllers designed for
each case are presented below.
R I I S The designed controllers for the four-machine system without
P = , considering the delay
UT 0 0 VT

also can be written as K(s)

9.42(s + 56.39)(s + 0.66)(s2 + 4.17s + 39.55)
PΠ1 = Π2, =
(s + 384)(s + 0.064)(s + 0.0044)(s2 + 201.3s + 1581)
Let X = diag(Π1, I, I), which is positive definite, so
The controller for four-machine system synchronised feedback
T considering the delay
X (11) X < 0,

which gives K(s)

10.539(s2 + 4s + 8)(s2 + 3.167s + 60.2)
Π1T (AT P + PA)Π1 ΠT1 PB Π1T CT =
(s + 5.674)(s2 + 3.191s + 25.45)(s2 + 17.02s + 1057)
BT PΠ1 −γI DT < 0. (11)
CΠ1 D −γI The controller for four-machine system non-synchronised feedback
considering the delay
Considering the term Π1T PAΠ1 = Π2T AΠ1,
8.051(s + 0.5824)(s2 + 1.951s + 14.65)
K(s) =
I 0 Ap BpCc R I (s + 9.994)(s2 + 0.5442s + 0.09534)
Π2T AΠ1 =
S V BcCp Ac UT 0 (s2 + 2.629s + 57.04)
×
^ (12) (s2 + 1.78s + 32.21)
Ap R + BpC Ap
= ^ ^
,
A SAp + BCp The controller for ten-machine system without considering the
delay
^ ^
where A = SAp R + SBpCcU T + VBcCp R + V AcU T , B = VBc, 91.5(s + 9.752)(s + 0.9412)(s + 4.096)
^ K(s) =
C = CcU T are the intermittent variables. (s + 6.47)(s + 14.94)(s + 0.4937)(s + 0.000339)
Now, the term Π1T PB = Π2T B (s2 + 1.288s + 49.75)
×
(s2 + 2.597s + 54.62)
I 0 Bw Bw
Π2T B = = (13)
S V 0 SBw The controller for ten-machine system synchronised feedback
considering the delay
Now, the term CΠ1
61.88(s + 0.4694)(s + 24.04)(s − 0.02341)
K(s) =
R I (s + 1.991)(s + 97.6)(s + 47.04)(s + 0.1229)
CΠ1 = Cz 0 = Cz R Cz . (14)
UT 0 (s2 + 1.554s + 89.82)
×
(s2 + 0.1025s + 0.2878)
Now, inserting (12)–(14) back to (11), we can reduce the problem
to be LMI The controller for ten-machine system non-synchronised feedback
considering the delay
^T
Φ1 + Φ1T Ap + A Bw RT CzT
106(s + 0.08869)(s2 + 0.7502s + 2.35)
∗ Φ2 + Φ2T SBw CzT K(s) =
(15) (s + 1.867)(s + 0.1387)(s + 603.4)(s + 4.524 × 104)
∗ ∗ −γI DzT (s2 + 4.073s + 96.51)
×
∗ ∗ ∗ −γI (s2 + 1.804s + 76.08)
^ ^
where Φ1 = Ap R + BpC and Φ2 = SAp + BCp.

3078 IET Gener. Transm. Distrib., 2018, Vol. 12 Iss. 12, pp. 3070-3078
© The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2018