1

Abstract-- Selective Modal Analysis (SMA) has been used in

the design of WAMS based damping of inter-area oscillations. In
conjunction with a Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI) formulation
and a polytopic model a single control law can be found to
guarantee pole placement for multiple contingencies. The
previous attempts have used a model containing all the 6 and m
modes, with SMA used to eliminate all other states. In practical
applications the resulting system is still too large to use in a
polytopic model. This paper presents an algorithm to further
reduce the system size to the relevant modes of oscillations. A 16
machine, 68 bus system is used as the test case with PSSs, DC
lines and SVCs acting as the control.

Keywords-- Inter-area oscillations, Linear Matrix Inequality
(LMI) Control, Polytopic Model, Selective Modal Analysis
(SMA), Wide Area Measurements.
I. INTRODUCTION
ith the deregulation of power systems, many tie-lines
between control areas have come to operate near their
maximum capacity, especially the ones serving heavy load
centers. Such stressed operating conditions have increased
inter-area oscillations between different control areas and even
led to major disturbances [1]-[4]. Over the past few decades,
attention has been focused on designing controllers to damp
inter-area oscillations. The traditional method of damping
these oscillations is through the use of Power System
Stabilizers (PSSs) that provide control action through
excitation control of generators [5]. However local PSSs alone
cannot guarantee adequate performance of the generator when
the operating point changes. An inappropriate coordination
among the local controllers may cause serious problems [6].
With the growing implementation of PMUs across the
power grids, it is now possible to observe and analyze system
wide dynamic phenomena in real-time. PMUs capture
dynamic data of power systems through synchronized
measurements enabled by GPS satellites. A controller based
on such remote signals can enhance damping of inter-area
oscillations and improve overall dynamic performance [7].

This work was supported by the California Institute for Energy and the
Environment (CIEE) Contract TRP-08-06, funded by the California Energy
Commissions Public Interest Energy Research Program.
Anamitra Pal (email: anam86@vt.edu) is a Ph. D student and James S.
Thorp (email: jsthorp@vt.edu) is a Research Professor at the Bradley
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Tech,
Blacksburg, VA-24061, USA.

A new PSS using two signals, the first, to damp the local
mode in the area and the second, global signal, to damp inter-
area modes is proposed in [8]. Supplementary Damping
Controllers (SDCs) for Flexible AC Transmission Systems
(FACTS) devices have been found to show great potential in
damping inter-area oscillations [9]. It has also been proved
that controlling the flow of DC lines can help in damping
small signal oscillations, increase power transfer capability
and improve transient stability of AC/DC hybrid systems [10],
[11]. Thus, the most ambitious approach for damping low
frequency oscillations would be to use wide area
measurements to coordinate PSSs, FACTS devices, and DC
lines in stabilizing inter-area oscillations.
One way of implementing such a coordinated control is
through the development of an LMI polytopic model of the
system where time delays are modeled as uncertain
parameters, unmeasured portion of the system are represented
by un-modeled dynamics, and LMI techniques are used to
design robust B
2
B

controllers [12]-[15]. The advantage of

the polytopic approach being that the span of model
uncertainty is considered within the design itself. An LMI
polytopic model has been used to design PSSs for a single
machine [12] and a nine bus, three machine system [13].
Output feedback for a nine machine system was developed in
[14]. A B
2
B

design with either full state feedback or output

feedback is formulated through a specification of the closed
loop pole locations. This has been used to design a controller
for a multi-area load frequency control in [15]. A sequential
conic programming approach to design PSSs in a model
system is developed in [16]; the conic region being a special
case of the general LMI region.
Although the LMI approach appears to give good results
for small sized systems, its direct application to bigger
systems has been limited due to its computational complexity
[17]. A technique is proposed in this paper to reduce the
system size to the relevant modes of oscillations to simplify
the computations. A reduced-order model of the New
EnglandNew York interconnected power system comprising
of 16 machines and 68 buses is used as the test case. The size
of the system is reduced using Selective Modal Analysis
(SMA) [18], [19]. The use of LMI control on the reduced
system is then examined. The aim of this paper is to extend
the LMI polytopic results using SMA to a MIMO controller
for damping inter-area oscillations in the test system, by
coordinating the control of PSSs, DC lines and SVCs.
Co-ordinated Control of Inter-area Oscillations
using SMA and LMI
Anamitra Pal, Student Member, IEEE, and James S. Thorp, Life Fellow, IEEE
W
978-1-4577-2159-5/12/$31.00 2011 IEEE
2
While there exist a number of other techniques for forming
reduced order models to study inter-area modes [20], [21],
SMA was chosen since it fit the LMI Matlab environment. It
is to be noted that any dynamic reduction that produced a
reduced order model involving only variables relevant to the
inter-area modes would be appropriate. The use of PMU
measurements in a state space identification framework to
create such a model from measured data is reported in [22].
The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section II
describes the mathematical basis of the control technique that
is explored in this paper. A detailed description of the
proposed algorithm is provided in Section III. The 16
machine, 68 bus system is described in Section IV. The list of
contingencies over which the control is tested is also defined
in this section. Section V summarizes the results of the
simulations and draws inferences. The conclusion is given in
Section VI.
II. MATHEMATICAL BACKGROUND
As described in [17], the polytopic B

B
2
formulation is
posed with state space models of the form,
x = Ax +B
1
+B
2
u
z

= C
1
x +
11
+
12
u
z
2
= C
2
x +
22
u
y = C

x +
1
+
2
u
(1)
Where x is the state of the system, u is the control, is a
disturbance, z

and z
2
are for the B

B
2
optimizations and y
is the output. The cases that would be used to test the
robustness of the controller, such as tie-line outages, load
changes, changes in line flows, etc., all have their own version
of the system denoted by (1). These systems are then the
vertices of the polytope. The k
th
such system denoted by S
k
is
of the form:
S
k
= _
A
k
B
k1
B
k2
C
1

k11

k12
C
k2
u
k22
C
k

k1

k2
_ (2)
The convex combination of the systems is given by
S{S
1
, S
2
, S
k
] = _o

: o

= 1, o

k
=1
_ (S)
Many of the convex combinations in (3) have simple
explanations. If S
1
is the base case and S
2
represents the
outage of a tie-line then oS
1
+(1 -o)S
2
can be thought of as
continuously increasing the impedance of the tie-line until it is
open. It is also obvious that many of the sub-matrices in S
k
may not depend on k for any given application. Most of the
applications only involve changes in the system matrix A.
Even for a modest system the matrix A and hence S can
become large when detailed machine models, exciters, PSSs,
and the states involved in controls are considered. In such a
scenario, the optimization problem can become unwieldy even
for a small example. A reduced order model based on SMA is
therefore necessary to minimize the size of the problem.
A particular organization of the dynamic equations for the
reduced order model is given by,
A = _
u
0
I u u
A
21
A
22
A
23
A
24
A
31
A
32
A
33
A
34
A
41
A
42
A
43
A
44
_ , B = _
u
u
u
B
2
_ , x = _
o

x
3
x
4
_ (4)
Where o and are differences from values at the reference
machine-a large external equivalent. x
3
denotes all the
remaining machine states (fluxes, exciters and PSSs) and x
4

denotes the states associated with the controls. The matrices
are formed by numerically perturbing the load flow
equilibrium using the Matlab suite PST [23]. The matrix B
2

corresponds to the control signals for the DC lines and the
SVCs. Both angles and frequencies are used as feedback
signals for these controls.
Eq. (4) can be partitioned in the SMA form as follows:
A = _
A
1
A
2
A
3
A
4
_ A
1
= _
u
0
I
A
21
A
22
_ A
2
= _
u u
A
23
A
24
_
A
3
= _
A
31
A
32
A
41
+B
21
A
42
+ B
22
_ A
4
= _
A
33
A
34
A
43
A
44
_ (S)
The block diagram in Fig. 1 is the key to SMA. The
transfer function of the system in the feedback path is,
E(s) = A
2
(sI - A
4
)
-1
A
3
(6)


Fig. 1. SMA Block Diagram

Equation (6) can be thought of as a combination of two
equations as shown below:
E(s) = E
1
(s) +E
2
(s)
E
1
(s) = A
2
(sI -A
4
)
-1
_
A
31
A
32
A
41
A
42
_
E
2
(s) = A
2
(sI -A
4
)
-1
_
u u
B
21
B
22
_
(7)
The SMA process is an iterative method beginning with the
eigenvalues and eigenvectors of A
1
. Using E
1
(s) to illustrate,
if the left eigenvalues and eigenvectors of A
1
are J

and :

then w

, the i
th
column of the matrix w is formed by
w

= A
2
(J

I -A
4
)
-1
_
A
31
A
32
A
41
A
42
_ :

(8)
A first correction to A
1
is then formed by
A
1ncxt
= A
1Iust
+H
1
wbcrc H
1
= wI
-1
(9)
In (9), I
-1
is the inverse of the matrix of left eigenvectors
The process is repeated with the eigenvalues and
eigenvectors of A
1
+H
1
. A few

iterations give a good estimate
to the eigenvalues of the A matrix. Given the presence of B in
(7), the right eigenvectors of A
1
are more appropriate for E
2
.
The result is a reduced order system of the form in (10) where
H is an approximation to E
1
, N is an approximation to E
2
and
K is the gain matrix obtained as the output of the LMI control.
x
1
= (A
1
+H+NK)x
1
(1u)
3
Thus, (10) is an approximation to the closed loop
eigenvalues using the fixed matrices H, N and K.
III. PROPOSED ALGORITHM
The system model denoted by (10) is to be used for the
polytopic design. But for large systems, if o and of all the
machines with respect to the swing machine are kept in A
1
, the
size of A
1
would still be an issue as stated in [17]. In order to
overcome this problem, an algorithm is proposed which uses
SMA to systematically reduce A
1
to its smallest possible size.
This procedure is to be followed after the traditional SMA
approach described in Section II has been used to obtain an A
1

matrix containing the o and modes of all the machines.
Step 1: Compute for the oscillatory modes of the system
and identify machines primarily responsible for those modes
on the basis of their Participation Factors. Arrange them in
descending order of frequency and participation percentage.
Step 2: Drop the machine which (a) is largely responsible
for the highest frequency of oscillation amongst all the
oscillatory modes and (b) has significantly low participation
for the low frequency inter-area modes.
Step 3: Perform iterations in SMA for this reduced order
model of the system and check for its convergence. The
convergence of SMA ensures that the reduced model has the
same dynamic response as the full model.
Step 4: If SMA converges, then do an elementary check of
the control. This check prevents excessive reduction in the
size of the system and also detects any possible negative
damping of the local modes.
Step 5: If the control is also found to be satisfactory, then
drop the next machine in the sequence and repeat Steps 3 and
4. If SMA is not found to converge or the control is not found
to be satisfactory, then the stable and converged system
obtained one level before is the smallest possible size of A
1
.
Fig. 2 gives a flowchart of the proposed algorithm. It is to
be noted that the primary objective of this algorithm is to
reduce the system size further than what was achieved using
the traditional SMA approach, without affecting the control of
the inter-area modes of oscillations. Although, control of some
of the local modes can be slightly affected, Step 4 of the
algorithm ensures that the system as a whole remains stable
throughout this process.
IV. AN EXAMPLE TEST SYSTEM
A benchmark model consisting of 16-machines, 68-buses
and five-areas, shown in Fig. 3, is used as the study system for
the damping control design. The first nine machines (G1G9)
are a simple representation of the New England Test System
(NETS) generation. Machines G10G13 denote the New York
Power System (NYPS) generation. The last three machines
(G14G16) are the dynamic equivalents of the three
neighboring groups connected to the NYPS.
The tie-lines connecting NETS and NYPS carry 700 MW.
Area #5 exports 1550 MW to NYPS and imports 24 MW from
Area #4 while 610 MW flows from Area #3 to NYPS and 175
MW from Area #3 to Area #4. The detailed description of the
test system including network data and dynamic data for the
machines, buses, and branches can be found in [23]. In order
to damp the inter area modes and study the effectiveness of
the polytopic control, the test system is modified by adding
parallel DC lines and SVCs.

Compute for the different frequencies
of oscillations and the corresponding
Participation Factors of Generators
Drop generator primarily responsible for the
Highest Frequency of Oscillation and having
less effect on the lower frequencies
Perform Iterations in SMA
Check for
convergence
Yes
Stop
No
Check for effect
on control
Not
Satisfactory
Stop
Satisfactory
Drop generator responsible for next Highest Frequency of
Oscillation and having lesser effect on the lower frequencies

Fig. 2. Flowchart of Proposed Algorithm


Fig. 3. The 16 machine, 68 bus system

The three DC lines are added in parallel with the tie-lines
(Bus 41 to Bus 42, Bus 42 to Bus 52, and Bus 46 to Bus 49).
SVCs were installed at Buses 26, 46, and 51. All machines
have simple exciters and turbine models. Machine 16 is the
reference, and all machines except machines 1, 2, 7, 14, have
PSSs as described in [23]. The WECC load model is assumed
at all the load buses. The real power is 80% constant current,
the reactive power is 80% constant admittance and all loads
have the remaining 20% as an induction motor load. The 8
cases selected for this test are described in Table I. In all the
cases apart from the base case, tie-line 1-27 is assumed to be
out of commission in addition to the particular contingency
under test. This is done to increase the severity of the
contingency and to further test the robustness of the control.
4
TABLE I
CASE BANK
Case No. Case Details
1 Base Case
2 Flow in 50-52 increased from 700 MW to 900 MW
3 Flow in 50-52 decreased from 700 MW to 100 MW
4 Outage of Tie-line 1-2
5 10% decrease in Inertial of equivalent at machine 14
6 10% increase in Inertial of equivalent at machine 14
7 90 % Load
8 110 % Load

The A matrix for each of the eight cases is 129 129.
Using the proposed algorithm, all the eight cases are reduced
to a 2u 2u A
1
matrix. Every A
1
matrix now contains the
angles and frequencies of only those machines which
correspond to the significant modes of oscillations. Each of
those LMI problems with 20 retained states is described by a
S2 SS LTI system. The collection of the eight cases results
in a S2 27S polytopic system while the closed loop system
has a size of S2 22S. The LMI optimization yields a single
feedback gain matrix for all the eight cases defined above.
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
Table II below gives a comparison of the LMI control
when applied to the test system without and with the use of the
proposed algorithm. From the results it becomes clear that by
reducing the system to two-thirds of its initial size the
computational time has been reduced by a factor of eight.

TABLE II
COMPARISON OF PROPOSED ALGORITHM WITH THE
TRADITIONAL SMA APPROACH

Traditional SMA
+ LMI
Proposed
Algorithm + LMI
System Size (A
1
) 30 x 30 20 x 20
Size of each LTI System 47 x 51 32 x 33
Size of Polytopic System 47 x 417 32 x 273
Size of Closed Loop
System
47 x 337 32 x 225
CPU Time (s)* 606.328895 75.493861
* The computations were performed on an Intel (R) Core i5 Processor
having a speed of 2.40 GHz and an installed memory (RAM) of 5.86 GB

The eigenvalues of the closed loop matrices for the eight
cases are shown in Fig. 4. Fewer eigenvalues appear in the
figure because of the proposed algorithm. The conic region is
used as the LMI region for pole placement. It is obvious from
the figure that all the close-loop poles lay in the LMI region.
The root loci starting at the eigenvalues of the base case as the
feedback gain is increased to its final values for all the eight
cases are shown in Figs. 5-12. The circles denote the starting
positions and the dots represent the trajectory followed as the
gain is increased. The plots confirm the fact that the control
described in this paper successfully damps all the low
frequency inter-area modes of oscillations present in the test
system. Some of the local modes do move towards the right
but none of them become unstable. Thus, it can be inferred
that although one-third of the machines originally present in
the system have been removed, the proposed control is robust
enough to keep the system stable under a wide variety of
contingencies. Also, the fact that the computational
complexity has been reduced by a large factor implies that this
technique can be readily applied to bigger systems.


Fig. 4. Eigenvalues of the closed loop matrices for the 8 cases shown in
Table I


Fig. 5. Root Locus Plot for Case 1


Fig. 6. Root Locus Plot for Case 2
5

Fig. 7. Root Locus Plot for Case 3


Fig. 8. Root Locus Plot for Case 4


Fig. 9. Root Locus Plot for Case 5


Fig. 10. Root Locus Plot for Case 6


Fig. 11. Root Locus Plot for Case 7


Fig. 12. Root Locus Plot for Case 8
VI. CONCLUSION
The use of PMU measurements and LMI control design in
damping inter-area oscillations has been examined. An
algorithm is proposed which uses SMA to systematically
6
reduce the size of the system to the relevant modes of
oscillations. The control designed for the 16 machine, 68 bus
test system has been found to be sufficiently robust to justify
attempting to apply this technique to larger systems.
Moreover, as this control scheme does not require prior
knowledge about the post-disturbance dynamics of operating
scenarios, it has potentially high applicability to large practical
power systems where the dynamics are unlikely to be
modeled. The size of the polytopic formulation is an issue for
application to large systems. The use of the algorithm
developed in this paper appears to offer a solution to the
problem.
VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support provided
by the California Energy Commission. This paper does not
necessarily represent the views of the Energy Commission, its
employees or the State of California. It has not been approved
or disapproved by the Energy Commission nor has the Energy
Commission passed upon the accuracy or adequacy of the
information.
Many faculty and students of the Power Lab at Virginia
Tech have contributed greatly towards this research. The
authors would like to especially thank Dr. Arun G. Phadke and
Dr. Virgilio Centeno for their valuable inputs.
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Anamitra Pal (S10) is currently pursuing his direct-
PhD degree in the Bradley Department of Electrical
& Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, USA. He
received his Bachelor of Engineering (B. E.) degree
from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi
(India) in 2008.
He has worked as a Manager in Tata Steel Ltd.
(TSL), India from 2008-10. His present research
interests include Power System Modeling, Small
Signal Stability and Wide Area Measurements.



James S. Thorp (LF 02) was the Hugh P. and Ethel
C. Kelley Professor of Electrical and Computer
Engineering and Department Head of the Bradley
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
at Virginia Tech from 2004 to 2009. He was the
Charles N. Mellowes Professor in Engineering at
Cornell University from 1994-2004. He was the
Director of the Cornell School of Electrical and
Computer Engineering from 1994 to 2001, a Faculty
Intern, American Electric Power Service Corporation
in 1976-77 and an Overseas Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge University
in 1988. He was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation National Scholar and was
elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 1989 and a Member of the National Academy
of Engineering in 1996. He received the 2001 Power Engineering Society
Career Service award, the 2006 IEEE Outstanding Power Engineering
Educator Award, and shared the 2007 Benjamin Franklin Medal with A. G.
Phadke.