Advanced Algorithms in Automatic Generation Control of Hydroelectric Power Plants

Abstract

The problem of load distribution between hydraulic units at hydropower plants is a difficult task due to the nonlinearity of hydro turbine characteristics and individual peculiarities of the generation units, in which operating conditions are often different. It is necessary to apply the most up-to-date optimization methods that take into account the nonlinearity of the turbine characteristics. The methods must also consider strict constraints on the operation conditions of the power equipment when searching for the extremum of the objective function specified in the form of equalities and inequalities. When solving the aforementioned optimization problem, the constraints on computing capacities of the digital automatic generation control systems that must operate in real-time mode were taken into account. To solve the optimization task, the interior point method was analyzed and the method of Lagrange multipliers was modified so that it could minimize turbine discharge and active energy losses in the windings of the power generators and unit power transformers. The article presents the simulation results of the developed optimization algorithms and the results of the field tests of the automatic generation control system executing the proposed algorithms. All of the tests showed a fairly high efficiency of the proposed optimization methods in real operation conditions. © 2022 by the authors.