Efficient Load Frequency Control of Renewable Integrated Power System: A Twin Delayed DDPG-Based Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

Abstract

Power systems have been evolving dynamically due to the integration of renewable energy sources, making it more challenging for power grids to control the frequency and tie-line power variations. In this context, this paper proposes an efficient automatic load frequency control of hybrid power system based on deep reinforcement learning. By incorporating intermittent renewable energy sources, variable loads and electric vehicles, the complexity of the interconnected power system is escalated for a more realistic approach. The proposed method tunes the proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller parameters using an improved twin delayed deep deterministic policy gradient (TD3) based reinforcement learning (RL) agent, where a non-negative fully connected layer is added with absolute function to avoid negative gain values. Multi deep reinforcement learning agents are trained to obtain the optimal controller gains for the given two-area interconnected system, and each agent uses the local area control error information to minimize the deviations in frequency and tie-line power. The integral absolute error (IAE) of area control error is used as a reward function to derive the controller gains. The proposed approach is tested under random load-generation disturbances along with nonlinear generation behaviors. The simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach compared to other techniques presented in the literature and show that it can effectively cope with nonlinearities caused by load-generation variations.