Scalability limitations in distributed primary and secondary frequency control
by Emma Tegling
at 10.30 - 11.15
The ongoing paradigm shift in power networks, where local, small-scale generation resources are increasingly replacing large-scale centralized power plants, will both enable and require frequency control schemes to be distributed and scalable. In this talk, we will model prototypical power system dynamics and take a closer look at distributed primary and secondary frequency controllers from a performance perspective. Specifically, we will highlight situations where a uniform performance bound in terms of, for example, expected frequency deviations, cannot be maintained as the number of nodes (generators) grows. In other words, where there are fundamental limitations to the controllers’ scalability. We will discuss how these limitations depend on the network topology, the availability and quality of measurement signals, and, in the case of secondary frequency control, the degree of controller centralization.
Further Notes:
Bio: Emma Tegling is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Institute of Data, Systems, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In January 2021, she joins the Department of Automatic Control at Lund University, Sweden, as a Senior Lecturer with a Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) professorship. She received her Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, in 2019, and her M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees, both in Engineering Physics, from the same institute in 2013 and 2011, respectively. She has also spent time as a visiting researcher at Caltech, the Johns Hopkins University, UC Santa Barbara and the University of Newcastle. She is the recipient of the Swedish Research Council International Postdoc Grant and a Sweden-America Foundation Fellowship. Emma’s research interests are within analysis and control of large-scale networked systems.