IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO.

1, JANUARY 2003

147

Robust Tuning of Power System Stabilizers Using LMI-Techniques

Herbert Werner, Petr Korba, and Tai Chen Yang

AbstractIn this paper, robust design and tuning of power

system stabilizers is considered. A new approach is presented
that utilizes recently developed techniques based on linear matrix
-design under pole region
inequalities (LMIs) for mixed 2
constraints. Uncertainty about plant parametersdue to variations in generation and load patternsis expressed in the form
of a linear fractional transformation, and a systematic procedure
for constructing the uncertainty representation is proposed. The
design is easily carried out by solving a standard LMI problem.
Simulation results on a single machine infinite bus model illustrate
the method, and the results are compared with a recently proposed
approach to the same problem based on quantitative feedback
theory (QFT).
Index TermsLinear matrix inequalities (LMIs), mixed
design, pole region constraint, power systems, robust
control.
2

I. INTRODUCTION

NE OF the stability problems in electrical power system

operations is the steady-state stability, or in control terminology, the small-signal stability around a system operating
point. Oscillations of small magnitude and low frequency,
linked with the electromechanical modes in power systems,
often persist for long periods of time and in some cases present
limitations on the power transfer capability. Power system
stabilizer (PSS) units have long been regarded as an effective
way to enhance the damping of electromechanical oscillations
in power systems [7]. Linearized models can be used for
this study [4] and a conventional PSS can be considered as a
single-input single-output feedback controller installed on a
generation set (a machine). One of the three signals: machine
shaft speed, ac bus frequency or accelerating power can be
used as the input to a conventional PSS. Of these, the most
commonly used is machine shaft speed [7]. The output of
the PSS, as a supplementary control signal, is applied to the
machine voltage regulator terminal.
Power systems constantly experience changes in operating
conditions due to variations in generation and load patterns,
as well as changes in transmission networks. There is a corresponding large variation in the small signal dynamic behavior
of a power system. This can be expressed as a parametric
uncertainty in the small signal linearized model of the system.
The problem considered in this work is robust design of
PSS so that adequate damping can be provided over a wide
Manuscript received November 12, 2001. Manuscript received in final form
July 26, 2002. Recommended by Associate Editor A. Ray.
H. Werner is with the Control Systems Center, UMIST, Manchester M60
1QD, U.K. (e-mail: herbert.werner@umist.ac.uk).
P. Korba is with ABB Switzerland Ltd., CH-5405 Baden-Dattwil, Switzerland
(e-mail: petr.korba@ch.abb.com).
T. C. Yang is with the School of Engineering and Information Technology
University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QT, U.K. (e-mail: taiyang@sussex.ac.uk).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCST.2002.806449

range of operating conditions. This work was motivated by a

recent paper [8], where a quantitative feedback theory (QFT)
approachbased on nonlinear programmingwas proposed
for the same problem.
In this paper an approach based on linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) is presented and compared with the results in [8].
It is well known that performance specifications for PSS systems in terms of damping and speed of response can be expressed in terms of an admissible pole region for the linearized,
small-signal model. On the other hand, maintaining stability
and performance over a range of uncertain parameters can be
-norm of the
handled by imposing an upper bound on the
closed-loop transfer function [9]. An important feature of LMIbased methods is the possibility of combining design constraints
such as these into a single convex optimization problem [2],
-norm can
[5]. A pole region constraint and a bound on the
be expressed as linear matrix inequalities, and efficient numerical interior-point algorithms are available to find the controller
thatunder these constraintsminimizes a quadratic performance index, provided a solution exists [3].
The paper is organized as follows. The design philosophy
is briefly outlined in Section II. The representation of the
model uncertainty is discussed in Section III, and the design is
illustrated in Section IV, where simulation results are shown
and compared with results reported previously. Conclusions
are drawn in Section V.
II. MIXED

-CONTROLLER DESIGN

The work presented in this paper is based on a fourth order

linearized statespace model of a single-machine infinite-bus
system
(1)
, and the plant
where the output is the machine shaft speed
input is a voltage added to the terminal reference voltage.
For details the reader should refer to [8]. The system matrix
in this model depends on the operating conditions, defined by
the values of the real power , the reactive power and line
impedance . A family of 336 linearized models of the plant is
constructed for a grid of operating points as , , and vary
independently in steps of 0.1 over the intervals (0.4, 1.0), ( 0.2,
0.5) and (0.2, 0.7), respectively. The problem considered in [8]
is to design a feedback controller that maintains a damping ratio
of at least 0.1 and a real part of all closed-loop poles less than
0.5 simultaneously for all models of the family.
With , and taking different values in the specified intervals, the uncertain plant is then represented by a family of
linear fourth-order models

1063-6536/03$17.00 2003 IEEE

(2)

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Fig. 1.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003

PSS control loop.

Fig. 2.

where the system matrices

describe the system dynamics at
different operating conditions. The PSS control loop is shown
in Fig. 1. The performance of the controller is assessed in terms
of rejection of a disturbance step at plant input.
In this paper, we consider the problem of designing a controller (the PSS block) that guarantees stability for all admissible plant models, while minimizing a quadratic performance
. An additional pole reindex for the nominal plant
gion constraint will be used to tune this controller such that it
satisfies the above robust performance specifications.

Uncertain system representation.

a controller that minimizes the 2-norm of the fictitious output

signal , under the constraints that the -norm of the transfer
function from to is less than one, and that the closed-loop
eigenvalues of the nominal system are located within a specified
region in the complex plane. An efficient algorithm for solving
this problem is available for example in the function hinfmix()
of the LMI control toolbox for Matlab [6].
III. REPRESENTATION OF THE UNCERTAINTY

The model uncertainty can be represented as a linear fractional transformation in the following way. Augment the model
(1) with a fictitious input and a fictitious output

To apply the procedure described in the previous section

to the design of a power system stabilizer, the model uncertaintyrepresented by a family of 336 linear modelsmust be
and
in (4). For this
expressed in terms of the matrices
purpose, write the system matrix at a given operating point as

(3)

(5)

, where is a real matrix that

and introduce feedback
. The dynamics of the system (3) are then
satisfies
governed by

represents the nominal operating conditions. The mawhere

and
must be chosen such that a
satisfying both
trices
, exists for all admissible operating conditions.
(5) and
The first requirement is equivalent to

Model Uncertainty

and with a suitable choice of the matrices

and , all models
representing the uncertain system (2) can be covered by (3) in
the sense that any admissible system matrix can be generated
by choosing a matrix with norm less than one.
Using the -procedure [1], it is straightforward to show that
the system (3) is stable for all admissible if

This result can be applied to the closed-loop configuration

shown in Fig. 2, where the physical plant model has been
and
to
augmented with fictitious inputs and outputs:
to include a quadratic
model parameter uncertainty, and
performance index discussed later. The augmented plant has
a statespace representation

Define two matrices

model order and

, where
is the
the number of linearized models, as

and introduce the singular value decomposition of these two

matrices

Let
exist for
and

and
, then
if the matrices
and
, where

and and are the columns of

elements of the matrices

and

satisfying (5)
are chosen as

, respectively. The

(4)
The following problem can be posed in the form of linear matrix inequalities and solved by convex optimization [3]: design

are the singular values of

and
ordered by decreasing
magnitude; small singular values indicate that the dimension of
the uncertainty ( or ) can be reduced.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003

Fig. 3. Open-loop plant poles in all admissible operating conditions.

To meet the requirement

and the rows of
columns of
be done as follows. Let

, the
need to be scaled. This can

and take
as a first scaling. In (5),
and
with
and , respectively, solve it for
replace
in all operating points and find
. Then a
that
exists for all operating points if
satisfies (5) and
and
are chosen as

IV. APPLICATION TO ROBUST PSS DESIGN

Fig. 4. Uncertainty representation after scaling.

In order to construct the uncertain model, a nominal system

must be chosen and the matrices
and
must
matrix
be computed. The distribution of open-loop plant poles of the
family of 336 linear systems is shown in Fig. 3. The nominal
system matrix was chosen as

where
and
are matrices whose entries are the
maximum and minimum values, respectively, of the correover
. This choice
sponding entries of
leads to an uncertainty representation that is approximately
centered within the admissible parameter range (see Fig. 4 and
comments below).
and
Computing the singular value decomposition of
leads to

Fig. 5. LMI region.

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Fig. 6.

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003

Closed-loop eigenvalues (dashed: LMI region).

Thus
, and considering the rapid decrease in magnitude
its numerical rank was taken as
.
of singular values of
Carrying out the scaling procedure described in the previous
the numerical values
section yields for

which together with the condition

represent the admissible range of parameter variation of the plant model. To
assess the conservatism of this uncertainty representation, the
is solved for
in all admissible opequation
erating points. The result is plotted in Fig. 4. The fact that the
unit circle is largely filled out by the individual models shows
that the representation is not overly conservative.
The function hinfmix() of the LMI control toolbox was
then used to design a robust controller for the system (4) with
and
and
as above. Design parameters are 1) the
weights for the quadratic performance index, here chosen as

where is the output matrix in (4) and

a scalar tuning
of the pole reparameter, and 2) the parameters
gion constraints shown in Fig. 5. The above choice of weights
for this performance index can be interpreted in terms of linear
and
are substituted in
quadratic optimal control: when
(4), the square of the 2-norm of represents the cost function

It was found convenient to fix

and use the pole region parameters for tuning. This allows to shape the transient response
directly in terms of damping and speed. Minimizing the above
cost under these pole region constraints ensures that the remaining freedom is used to find a good compromise between
performance and control effort. If required, the parameter can
be used to adjust the penalty on control action.
,
,
, and
results
The choice
in a controller

with values given as follows:

The resulting closed-loop pole distribution is shown in Fig. 6,

and Fig. 7 shows the step response in three different operating
points which were also considered in [8].
and can be used to
The pole region parameters
fine-tune the performance of the control system. For example,
of the pole region to the left leads
moving the right boundary
to a smaller peak of the regulation error in response to a disturbance step and to a larger peak of the control signal. Fig. 8 illustrates the tradeoff between control effort and peak regulation
error.
Comparison With Results Reported Previously
In [8], a robust design procedure based on quantitative
feedback theory and nonlinear programming was presented.
Because the nonlinear optimization approach leads to local

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003

Fig. 7.

System response to a 5% disturbance step of model linearized in different operating conditions. (a)
= 0:6. (c) P = 1:0; Q = 0:5; X = 0:7.

Q = 0:0; X

Fig. 8.

151

= 0:8;

= 0:4;

= 0:2. (b) P = 0:8;

Tradeoff between control effort and maximum regulation error for the nominal system (OC1), using  as design parameter.

minima, two different controllers were proposed. Table I

,
shows the four performance measures
,
the settling time for
and
the noise power in the control signal when white
noise is injected at the plant output (noise power 10 , sample

time 2 10 in the Simulink model). For the three controllers

(LMI design) and
(QFT design proposed
in [8]) the performance is given for the nominal system as well
as for the worst-case admissible parameter combination of the
uncertain plant.

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TABLE I
COMPARISON OF RESULTS WITH LMI-BASED DESIGN AND QFT DESIGN

straint guarantees that for any choice of pole region parameters

the system is stable in all admissible operating conditions. This
fact may be used to develop an automated search strategy for
tuning the controller.
In contrast to the QFT-design proposed in [8], no initial guess
of a controller is required. And because the LMI problem is
convex, the optimal controller can be computed with efficient
interior-point algorithms.
REFERENCES

V. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Comparing the simulation results with both types of controller shows that the LMI design achieves similar regulation
errors and settling times with less control effort. The pole recan be used as a tuning knob to trade congion parameter
trol effort against peak regulation error. Moreover, the LMI controller is much less noise sensitive than the QFT-based design.
This is due to the fact that the second-order QFT controllers
are biproper. The LMI approach includes a robust design of the
high-frequency rolloff characteristics of the fourth-order concan be used as a tuning knob
troller, where the parameter
to trade robust performance against noise sensitivity.
The design approach presented in this paper can be carried out
as an automated procedure. The data input consists of a family of
linear models and the design specifications expressed in terms
of pole region parameters , , and . Practical experience
-cost function
suggests that one can fix the weights in the
-conto unity and use only the pole region for tuning. The

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