Design of Wide Area SVC Robust Controller for Damping Inter-Area Oscillations of a Power System

Increasing power transfer capability of existing transmission lines is one of the key issues in the power systems. Inter-area oscillations have effect on the power transfer capability and decrease the network efficiency. On the other hand, FACTS devices can be used to increase the power transfer capability by damping the inter-area oscillations. This paper proposes a Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) based robust controller design to generate an additional stabilizing signal for a Static VAR Compensator (SVC) in order to increase damping of the inter-area modes. Wide Area Measurement (WAM) has been employed by the controller which is designed based on the H∞ mixed-sensitivity synthesis method. The effectiveness of the method is investigated by a test system consisting of 16 numbers of generators, 68 buses and 5 areas. The results show good and robust performance of the controller in damping the oscillations.