Performance evaluation for damping controllers of power systems based on multi-agent models

This paper proposes a multi-layer multi-agent model for the performance evaluation of power systems, which is different from the existing multi-agent ones. To describe the impact of the structure of the networked power system, the proposed model consists of three kinds of agents that form three layers: control agents such as the generators and associated controllers, information agents to exchange the information based on the wide area measurement system (WAMS) or transmit control signals to the power system stabilizers (PSSs), and network-node agents such as the generation nodes and load nodes connected with transmission lines. An optimal index is presented to evaluate the performance of damping controllers to the system's inter-area oscillation with respect to the information-layer topology. Then, the authors show that the inter-area information exchange is more powerful than the exchange within a given area to control the inter-area low frequency oscillation based on simulation analysis. This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants Nos. 50707035, 50595411, 60425307, 60221301, and 50607005, in part by the 111 project (B08013) and Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in University (IRT0515) and in part by the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-05-0216).