Interconnected System Frequency Response
Roger L. King and Minh-Luan Ngo
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Mississippi State University
Mississippi State, MS 39762-9571
Abstract
Frequency management is a primary goal in the control
of an electric power system. Traditionally, this has been
accomplished via tie-line bias control within a well defined
control area. However, the control area 's frequency bias
characteristic, which is an important component in the tie-
line bias control equation, is a dgficult term to quantih.
This is due to the fact that this term represents the combined
droop characteristics of all the generators serving the load
plus the frequency dependency of the load. However, since
most load frequency controllers use integral controllers, this
inability to accurately quanti& the control area 'sfrequency
response characteristic has not caused unacceptable control
errors. But, as the power industry moves into a new era, the
control schemes must be re-examined in the light of the new
system operating rules. This paper will introduce some new
ideas on frequency management that utilize what is referred
to in this paper as the interconnected system frequency
response characteristic, ,(jsy9 This paper will explain the
problems associated with the present approach and why this
new method offers improvements for large control areas,
especially in the new competitive environment. An analytical
approach for determining ,(jsclsys in real-time will be shown.
This approach has been developed with system load data
from the Southern Electric System.
Keywords: Frequency bias coefficient, Area generation
control, Area control error
Control areas and AGC
The electric utility system in the United States is divided
into many interconnected control areas. Each of these areas
is responsible for generating enough power to meet its own
customers or "native load." By keeping the generated power
equal to the power consumed by the load, utilities keep the
overall system frequency at 60 Hz. Under-generation will
cause the frequency to drop below 60 Hz while
over-generation will cause the frequency to rise above 60 Hz.
Since the loads in the system are constantly changing, the
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0-8186-7352-4/96 $05.00 0 1996 IEEE
Rogelio Luck
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Mississippi State University
Mississippi State, MS 39762-9550
generation level in each area must be changed as well, in
order to maintain the desired frequency. The various control
areas are interconnected by transmission lines called tie-lines.
Periodically, the different areas contract sales of bulk power
from one to another across these tie-lines. For example, one
area may agree to buy 100 MWs of power from its neighbor
for the next hour. The two areas then adjust their generation
levels in order to cause the 100 MWs to flow out of the
selling area and into the buying area across the tie-line.
This practice adds another factor to generation control.
Not only must areas adjust their generation to meet their own
changing native load, but they must also maintain any
scheduled tie-line transactions. It is possible, by monitoring
both the tie-line flow and the system frequency to determine
the proper generation action (raise or lower). Thus, electric
utilities use an automatic generation control (AGC) system to
balance their moment-to-moment electrical generation to load
within a given control area.
The primary objectives of AGC are: (a) to keep tie line
interchanges as scheduled, (b) to maintain the system
frequency at the nominal frequency (60 Hz in the U.S.A.),
(c) to operate with security in mind (i.e., with sufficient
reserve to accommodate disturbances in demand or
generation), (d) to optimize economical operation, and (e) to
maximize compliance with North American Electric
Reliability Council (NERC) guidelines [ 11. Regardless of
these guidelines, any good controller for load-frequency
balance should be designed to reject frequency and load
disturbances, i.e., items (a), (b), and (c). NERC guidelines
exist to enforce items (a), (b), and (c) in a manner consistent
throughout the interconnected system by establishing bounds
in the performance of the AGCs.
Tie-line bias control
The current practice of the load frequency control (LFC)
h c t i o n of automatic generation control (AGC) is based on
a strategy known as tie-line bias control. In this control
strategy each area of an interconnected system tries to
regulate its area control error (ACE) to zero, where:
 Then, since a portion of the load is frequency dependent, the
final load will be less than that at rated frequency.
Since a control area's p is continuously changing and no
The term T,-T, is the difference between the actual and the good technique has been developed to measure it in real-time,
schleduled net interchange on the tie lines. The term it must be estimated. The estimated value of p is called the
representing the area's natural response to frequency Tie-Line Frequency Bias Coefficient, B [3]. The closer B
deviations is lOp(f,-f,). The coefficient, p, is known as the matches p, the better AGC will be able to reduce the number
system natural response coefficient. It is difficult to obtain of unnecessary control actions and minimize inadvertent
an accurate value of p since it depends on the governor energy flows. NERC guidelines require that the annual
reslponse capability of the generating units presently on-line estimate for B be based on the average of the area's B, as
and the frequency dependence of the constantly changing observed for past disturbances during peak hours. NERC
load. This characteristic is expressed as: 1 I
also requires that the monthly average of B should not be
less then 1% of the control area's annual estimated peak load
p = -1 + D [I]. Therefore, it is common practice for a utility to use 1%
R of its annual peak load as its value for B in the ACE
equation (equation 1).
where, The generator's droop characteristic and the frequency
1iR is the generator regulation or droop, dependency of the load permit frequency management of a
D is the load damping Characteristic. control area to be somewhat self-regulating. However, since
there is a strong desire to keep frequency at its nominal
R is the steady state characteristic relating frequency of a value, there must be a supplemental control system (AGC) to
generator to generated power (see figure 1). Ideally, the adjust a unit's output to bring the steady state frequency back
system individual unit droop characteristics are set to be to nominal.
about equal to minimize turbine governor oscillation. Since the control areas operate as an interconnected
Typically, droops are designed to range from 3 to 5 percent. system, it is important for a particular control area's AGC to
In other words, a governor droop characteristic of 5% means be able to determine the source of a disturbance (i.e., inside
a 5% change in frequency (e.g., 3 Hz on a 60 Hz system) or outside of its area). This task is accomplished with the
will result in a unit cycling its output from zero to full load. ACE equation and tie-line bias control. Using the system
However, according to a recent EPRI survey, the droop frequency and the net power flowing over the tie-lines, AGC
characteristics of the generators measured in the survey can differentiate between an internal and external disturbance.
actually ranged from 6.9 to 12.2 percent [2]. These values If it is an internal disturbance, it will be the task of the local
are much higher than the commonly anticipated range of 3 to AGC to adjust area generation to meet the load. If it is an
5 percent. external disturbance, the control area's obligation is to
provide power to the affected control area in a proportion
equivalent to the control area's natural system response
coefficient, p.
r I
4 I Actual vs estimated ACE
U
The actual error between generation and load of an area
is the area's actual ACE. The estimated ACE is calculated
using the estimated values of the tie line interchange,
frequency deviations from the nominal, and the estimated
frequency bias factor, B. It is this estimated ACE that is
used as a control variable by AGC. When the frequency bias
of the estimated ACE matches with the actual frequency bias
P of the area, the estimated ACE and the actual ACE are
0 Unit output
identical [3]. Since one of the objectives of AGC is to
Figure 1 Speed droop characteristic of a governor. regulate generation, its input should be the actual ACE. It
can be argued that integral action in AGC results in both
I) represents the self-regulating characteristic of the load. actual and estimated ACE being averaged to zero over time,
It is expressed as the percent change in the connected load but the transient response of AGC can be significantly
divided by the percent change in frequency. In-other-words, degraded by errors in the frequency bias factor. For
as system load increases the system frequency decreases. example, variations in the estimated ACE can be much larger

307
than variations in the actual ACE, if the frequency bias term
in the estimated ACE is too large. Also, an estimated ACE
based on a constant frequency bias factor is non-linearly
related to the required change in generation because the
actual frequency bias factor is non-linearly related to the
operating state of the area, i.e., frequency and load. Using an
estimated ACE based on a constant frequency bias setting as
the system error in AGC introduces an undesirable
nonlinearity into the control system.
To illustrate these points, the estimated frequency
responses, 10B(f, - fs), for the Southern Electric System
(SES) were calculated for the month of July 1994. For 1994,
SES used a constant B coefficient of 321 MW/O.lHz. The
calculated values are the average frequency responses over a
thirty days period. The calculated values of the frequency
response can be seen in Table 1.
Frequency Response Term of ACE
I SES'SB I +lo% B I -10% B
1 E; I
11
-0.4909 I
I
-0.5399 I
I
-0.4418
Standard
Deviation 28.7729 3 1.6509 25.8961
(MW)
Table 1: Calculated Frequency Response with Different
B's for the SES July 1994 data.
Table 1 shows that the mean value of the frequency
response term of the ACE equation actually used on the SES
is less than 0.5 MW. This is as expected since integral
action of the controller should work to zero out the error.
Note that 95% of the excursions for the month were within
57.6 MW (i.e~,two standard deviations). However, note that
if the B coefficient was 10 percent higher (and NERC prefers
utilities to err towards supplying additional frequency
response), then the mean would worsen by 10 percent. In
this case, two standard deviations would be 63.3 MW.
Conversely, if the B coefficient was 10 percent less than
what is presently used, an improvement in the inadvertent
energy interchange and an improvement in the magnitude of
the excursions would be noted.
Frequency support
In textbooks dealing with the subject of automatic
generation control [4] it is shown that the change in steady
state frequency due to an incremental change in load power
in a particular control area is:
Also, since control areas are interconnected, it can be
shown that the change in the system steady state frequency
due to an incremental change in load power in a particular
control area is:
Am - APLI
= (4)
P, + P* + a * * + P"
The assumption that the system frequency is constant is valid
if the tie-lines interconnecting the control areas are stiff.
To illustrate the frequency support offered by operating
in an interconnected power system consider the following
example (see figure 2). First, consider the case where Area
1 has its three tie-lines open and is operating in isolation and
there is no AGC operating. Assume this control area's
natural response characteristic, p, is 300 MW/O.l Hz based
upon the 1% of peak load guideline. Now, what happens if
the area experiences a 10 MW increase in load? From
1
II
equation 3, it can be seen that the steady state frequency
deviation will be a -0.00333 Hz. The decrease in frequency
is expected due to the fact no AGC was available to change
the generator outputs to match the 10 MW load increase.
Now consider what happens if this same system is
interconnected with three smaller control areas with p's of 75
MW/O.lHz and Area 1 again experiences a 10 MW increase
in load. Again, there are no AGCs operating in any of the
control areas. From equation 4, it can be determined that the
interconnected system has a steady state frequency deviation
of -0.0019 Hz. This is a 43.4% improvement in frequency
management due to the interconnection.
Area 3
Area 2 Area 4
Figure 2 Four control areas interconnected.
However, this frequency support does not come for free
on the interconnected system. Using the same scenarios
postulated above, it can be seen in the isolated control
system that for a 0.00333 Hz chnage in frequecny, the units
308
 on-line in Area 1 will increase their outputs by 9.99 MW due technique used past load data (past several minutes,
to droop and load frequecny dependency. In the yesterday, and the same day last week) and the AGC time
interconnected scenario, where the frequency deviation is cycle (every 6 seconds) to predict the load change that was
0.0019 Hz, the units in Area 1 will increase their outputs by dependent upon time. This can be thought of as:
a total of 5.7 MWs, while the three smaller areas are
required to increase their outputs by 1.425 MWs each. The 6L
&=---At
total increase in generation in this case is 9.975 MWs for the 8t
10 MW load increase. Therefore, Area 1 only had to
provide 57% of the generation for the short term frequency
support instead of all of it. The other three areas provide the where,
balance of the power for a problem that is not theirs. AL is the actual change in load,
In the interconnected case, the larger system (Area 1) did 6L/6t is the time dependency of the load,
noi have to provide all of it's own frequency support due to At is the time between each AGC cycle.
the fact it could lean on the ties. In fact, it experienced a
42.9%decrease in the amount of its own generation used for With the success of this approach, it became apparent that a
frequency support. However, it needs to be realized that this similar technique might be feasible for predicting p.
leaning on the ties for frequency support is only a short term Since a load disturbance results in a frequency deviation,
solution. The AGC of Area 1 needs to recognize the it was postulated that the change in load had not only a time
shortfall in generation and adjust generator outputs to pick up dependent component, but also a frequency dependent
the 10 MW load increase and bring the system frequency portion. This can be thought of as:
back to its nominal value.
However, it also needs to be recognized that if any of the AL = -6L
At + - 6L AO
three smaller areas had a similar 10 MW increase in load that 6t 60
Area 1 would supply 5.7 MWs towards the system frequency
support. Never-the-less, under the old operating philosophy,
all of these inadvertent energy exchanges were accounted for where,
and the control area that needed to lean on the ties paid the 6 U 6 o is the frequency dependency of the load,
grid back in-kind at an appropriate time. A o is the change in frequency between each AGC cycle.
A complication arises now that the Energy Policy Act of
1992 has opened the power generation market to competition. Examining equations 3 and 6 shows that the 6L/6o term
Now, it must be determined how to handle frequency in equation 6 is equivalent to the system natural response
management with more units coming on-line as independent coefficient, p. Note also, that the denominator of equation
power producers (IPPs). For power system operating and 4 dictates that the interconnected system frequency deviation
control purposes it is possible to handle IPPs as just another is a function of all of the droop characteristics of the units
tie-line. In-other-words, there should be a certain amount of on-line and the overall system load damping characteristic
power scheduled for that line. (see equation 2). So, when making an attempt to predict a
Looking at figure 2 again, what happens if one of the particular control area's system natural response coefficient,
areas is now just a generating unit? Assume a frequency p, from its load changes (APJ and system frequency
excursion occurs and an area leans on the ties for short term deviations (Am) the value actually predicted is what is
frelquency support. How will the control area who was the referred to in this paper as the interconnected system
recipient of frequency support from an IPP pay energy back frequency response characteristic, psys and it will be defined
to ihe IPP? Since an IPP is only an energy supplier, it would as:
appear that it would seek a monetary payback for the
inadvertent energy. Therefore, as utilities price their ancillary P*s = P, + p* + ... + p" (7)
services, this new complication to the operation and control
of the bulk power system must be considered.
Therefore, equation 6 can be simplified and rewritten as:
Estimation of ssYs AL AA? + , p AO
= (8)
Previous research [5] had shown that it was feasible to
make accurate very short term (-10 minute) load forecasts
froim actual load data. The technique utilized a p-step ahead When actual past AGC data is used, equation 8 can be
autoregressive prediction with a least means squares recursive rewritten in matrix form as:
algorithm and an exponential forgetting factor. This

309

AL At Aa
ALK
-
AtK AmK
[p”,] (9)
where,
AL is the present load change,
AL, is the load change at the Kth past AGC cycle,
At is the change in time between data points. If all the
AGC data is used, then this is a constant equal to the AGC
cycle time (e.g., 6 seconds).,
Am is the frequency deviation associated with the present
load change,
A% is the frequency deviation associated with the oldest
load change.
As stated previously, a separate algorithm has already
been developed for the very short term load forecasting
portion of equation 9. In other words, the methodology for
finding A has already been developed and is different from
that described herein for psYs. One reason for this is that Aa
typically has to be measured over several AGC cycles. This
requirement is due to the fact there is very little change in
frequency from one AGC cycle to the next cycle. In fact,
this change is so small that it initially gave divide by zero
errors in the prediction algorithm.
Equation 9 can now be solved by a least squares
estimation technique with the resulting value for psys being
in units of MW/Hz [6]. It was found that at least 30 minutes
of past data were required in the calculation to obtain Rz
correlations of significance. Values for psys varied
significantly based upon the time of day the calculations
were made. However, it is important to note that these
numbers were normally less than the B used by the Southem
Electric System in the ACE equation. The reader is
reminded to review the findings demonstrated in table 1
about how the magnitude of B contributed to the swings in
the frequency term of the ACE equation. Normally, large
swings in ACE are accompanied by control actions.
The reason for calculating psysis that since this value
represents the interconnected system’s frequency response
characteristic (see equation 4), then this value may be
important in determining how much frequency support a
given control area should be required to supply to the
interconnection. For example, psys in the example of figure
2 is 525 MWlO.1 Hz according to the NERC 1% of peak
requirement. In the new deregulated environment, frequency
support might be negotiated between the four control areas
in a different manner (e.g., 13 1.25 M W / O . 1 Hz each) or if an
IPP is involved they may not want to participate in frequency
support at all. In this case, Area 1 might take 300 MWlO.1
310
Hz of support and the other two areas pick up 112.5 MWIO. 1
Hz each. Another scenario, is that there may be IPPs
wanting to sell frequency support (e.g., an IPP may offer to
pickup 500 MW/O.1 Hz of frequency support). Never-the-
less, whatever is decided there needs to be a method to
verify the interconnect has proper frequency support. This
technique of estimating psysmay be that method.
P b q W ,xbq,
Frequency management of the interconnected power
system will need to be maintained even as the electric utility
industry undergoes significant changes in its power
generation options. This service will probably be bought or
sold by energy suppliers and transmission companies as an
ancillary cost of doing business. It will be important for all
participants to understand the importance of frequency
management and how it works on an interconnected system.
It will also be important for companies that buy or sell these
service to confirm that they are getting or have available to
them the services for which they have paid. The
interconnected system frequency response characteristic, psys,
is a possible solution.
The research reported in this paper has been supported by
grant number ECS-92-16549 from the National Science
Foundation and contract number RP 8030-12 from the Electric
Power Research Institute. The data for the ACE calculations
was supplied by Southem Company Services.
References
1. North American Electric Reliability Council Control
Performance Criteria Training Document, May 3, 1991.
2. “Impacts of Governor Response Changes on the Security
of North American Interconnections,” EPRI Final Report
October 1992.
3. N. Jaleeli, D.N. Ewart, and L.H. Fink, “Understanding
Automatic Generation Control, “IEEE Transactions on
Power System, Vol. 7, No. 3 August 1992, pp. 1106-
1122.
4. A.J. Wood and B.F. Wollenberg, Power Generation,
Operation, & Control, John Wiley & Sons, 1984.
5. R.L. King and R. Luck, “Intelligent Control Concepts for
Automatic Generation Control of Power Systems,” NSF
Annual Report ECS-92-16549, March 31, 1995.
6. Minh-Luan D. Ngo, “Determination of the Interconnected
System Frequency Response Characteristic,” MS Thesis,
Mississippi State University, December 1995.