Power system reduction to simplify the design of damping controllers for interarea oscillations

This paper describes the application of a reduction method to power systems to obtain simplified models that facilitate the design of damping controllers. The reduced system retains the lightly damped swing of interest and exhibits modal characteristics similar to the unreduced system in the frequency range associated with swing modes. A power system damping controller is designed using a reduced system. The modal characteristics of the reduced and unreduced system with the damping controller included, are compared. The validity of the control design is assessed via nonlinear simulations. The reduction method is simple to implement and is based on the computation of the observability and controllability Gramians.