Abstract

Although in electric power systems (EPS) the regulatory level guarantees a bounded error between the reference and the corresponding system variables, to keep its availability in time, optimizing the system operation is required for operational reasons such as, economic and/or environmental. In order to do this, there are the following alternative solutions: first, replacing the regulatory system with an optimized control system or simply adding an optimized supervisory level, without modifying the regulatory level. However, due to the high cost associated with the modification of regulatory controllers, the industrial sector accepts more easily the second alternative. In addition, a hierarchical supervisory control system improves the regulatory level through a new optimal signal support, without any direct intervention in the already installed regulatory control system. This work presents a secondary frequency control scheme in an electric power system, through a hierarchical model predictive control (MPC). The regulatory level, corresponding to traditional primary and secondary control, will be maintained. An optimal additive signal is included, which is generated from a MPC algorithm, in order to optimize the behavior of the traditional secondary control system.