A Simplified Robust Control Design Method for Wide Area Damping Controllers

In this work a simplified robust control design method is proposed for Wide-Area Damping Control (WADC). Several challenges are considered during the control design such as output-feedback, low order controllers as well as robustness to time variation communication delay and operating point (load level). The methods main goal is to minimize the spectral abscissa with minimum damping constraints using a non-convex optimization algorithm. The use of spectral abscissa simplifies the method application making it an alternative to the H_∞ minimization approach proposed in the literature. The modal analysis and time-domain simulations of a Brazilian equivalent system is performed to assess the control robustness and performance.