Coordinated Frequency Control through Safe Reinforcement Learning

Abstract: With widespread deployment of renewables, the electric power grids are experiencing increasing dynamics and uncertainties, with its secure operation being threatened. Existing frequency control schemes based on day-ahead offline analysis and minute-level online sensitivity calculations are difficult to adapt to rapidly changing system states. In particular, they are unable to facilitate coordinated control of system frequency and power flows. A refined approach and tools are urgently needed to assist system operators to make timely decisions. This paper proposes a novel model-free coordinated frequency control framework based on safe reinforcement learning, with multiple control objectives considered. The load frequency control problem is modeled as a constrained Markov decision process, which can be solved by an AI agent continuously interacting with the grid to achieve sub-second decision making. Extensive numerical experiments conducted at East China Power Grid demonstrate the effectiveness and promise of the proposed method.