Computation of the controllable swing mode spectrum of FACTS and HVDC in large power systems

Abstract

This paper presents computation of swing modes of a large power system that could be significantly affected by power swing damping controllers in FACTS or HVDC devices at a given location. Modal controllability is a suitable measure to isolate these modes for analysis. Computation of the controllable swing mode spectrum is useful, especially in situations where the controller structure and feedback signals are not frozen (e.g., at the planning stage). This paper proposes two important steps that allow us to map the problem of finding highly controllable swing modes to the problem of finding the swing modes that have high transfer function residues (for which efficient algorithms are available). The steps are: (a) normalization of the eigenvectors corresponding to different modes and (b) identification of specific feedback signals for each type of FACTS/HVDC device such that the modal observability and modal controllability are tightly coupled. Once the mapping is done, a computationally efficient method like the Subspace Accelerated Dominant Pole Algorithm [16] (SADPA) can be adapted to find the highly controllable swing modes. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated by case studies of FACTS and HVDC devices in a 16-machine system and the Indian power grid.