2017 IEEE PES-IAS PowerAfrica
Adaptive Discrete Wavelet Transform Based Technique
for Load Frequency Control
1
Isaac Kofi Otchere, 2Desmond Okwabi Ampofo
Computer & Electrical Eng. Dept.
University of Energy and Natural Resources
Sunyani, Ghana
1
isaac.otchere@uenr.edu.gh
2
desmond.ampofo@uenr.edu.gh
Abstract This paper presents an adaptive discrete wavelet
transform (DWT) based genetic algorithm (GA) technique for
automatic generation control (AGC) systems. The controller
ensures a zero steady state error for frequency deviation,
mitigates inter area oscillations between interconnected power
system and damps out noise from the Area Control Error (ACE)
signal. The non-orthogonal DWT with GA optimization
technique is employed to determine the optimal gains of the
proposed DWT based controller. The performance of the
proposed controller was evaluated by applying it to a known
two-area interconnected system. The Load frequency model was
also subjected to noise/disturbance to validate the robustness of
the proposed DWT-GA based controller. Integral square error
(ISE) and signal integrity (SI) indices were the performance
indices used. Test results show an enhanced performance with
less settling time, overshoot and zero frequency deviation after a
load disturbance.
Index TermsArea control error, automatic generation control,
discrete wavelet transform, genetic algorithm, load frequency
control
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE MODERNIZATION of the present day power network
call for the need of delivering power quality to
consumers. Since most power system is interconnected, there
is a need in preserving the reliability and quality of power
supply. Although power quality is utility driven, the
consumer takes precedence. Power quality is maintaining the
power supply as close as possible to ideal operating
conditions (pure sinusoidal voltage supply at rated frequency,
phase angle and magnitude) [1]. Hence maintaining the
integrity and reliability of the interconnected power systems
is vital in achieving the above ideal operating conditions even
in the present of disturbance/noise. Furthermore, upholding a
constant steady state frequency and tie line power flow is one
of the key conditions in attaining power system stability,
reliability and integrity [2]. Variations in load demand
without a corresponding change in generation may adversely
affect system frequency, which in turn negatively impacts
978-1-5090-4746-8/17/$31.00 2017 IEEE
3
Emmanuel Asuming Frimpong MIEEE
Electrical & Electronic Eng. Dept.
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
Kumasi, Ghana
eafrimpong.soe@knust.edu.gh
power system stability. To mitigate these drawbacks,
automatic generation control (AGC) are employed in
regulating and maintaining a constant steady state error of
frequency deviation and tie line power flows [3]. One
important aspect of AGC is Load Frequency Control (LFC).
The main objective of LFC is to track the load variation so
as to regulate the frequency to a scheduled set point and also
maintain the net interchange of power across the
interconnected power network. In achieving the above
objectives, several control techniques has been developed in
literature for AGC/LFC application [2]-[6]. The area control
error (ACE) is deployed as the input signal to the AGC plant.
The well-known conventional proportional integral and
derivative (PID) controller has been used extensively by
industries for LFC applications to achieve a zero ACE. But to
optimize the gain parameters of the PID in formulating the
ACE, optimization algorithms such as Fuzzy logic, Genetic
algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), bio
inspired Firefly, ant colony etc. has been adopted in [4]-[8].
Although good performance (minimal settling time, lesser
damping oscillations and overshoot/undershoot values) has
been reported for online data acquisition and time-varying
non-linear operating conditions, damping out noise present in
the LFC is still a major concern. The performance of the LFC
is affected when subjected to noise condition.
To overcome the aforementioned challenges, this paper
presents a resilient and robust LFC controller deploying
discrete wavelet transform (DWT) based genetic algorithm
(GA) control scheme to regulate ACE. The GA is used to
search for the optimal gains of the DWT control. The DWT-
GA based controller for LFC is modelled in a Simulink
environment. The test system is evaluated with variation of
load disturbance and noise.
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 2017 IEEE PES-IAS PowerAfrica

II. LFC SYSTEM MODEL AND PROBLEM FORMULATION 1 1

PL1 +
A two-area interconnected system with non-reheat thermal Kp R 2 1 1 PL1
ACE1 = 2
+ = PL1 (2)
1 1 1 1 R1 Kp1 1 1 1 1
power plants was used as the test system. The model of the Kp + Kp + R + R Kp + Kp + R + R
systems is shown in Fig. 1. For a two or more interconnected 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2

power network, the generation at each unit area needs to be 1 1

PL1 +

regulated to maintain a scheduled interchange of power. The Kp R 1 1 P
ACE2 = 2 2
+ L 1
= 0 (3)
design of an LFC model consist of two control loops; the 1 1 1 1 R2 Kp2 1 1 1 1
+
Kp Kp R R + + + + +
primary and secondary controls [9], [10]. 1 2 1 2 Kp1 Kp2 R1 R2
The primary control loop consists of the turbine-governor where R1 and R2 are the speed droop characteristics of the
model which is used to control the opening and closing of the governors in area 1 and 2 respectively, and PL1 is the change
steam valve for a load change response. The primary control in load.
alone cannot be used to regulate the system frequency to the TABLE 1
GENERATING UNIT PARAMETERS
scheduled set point. To maintain a constant frequency
between large area interconnected power systems and also MVAbase (2000MW) Area 1 Area 2
mitigate the inter area oscillations, a secondary controller is
Rate(MW) 2000 2000
needed. The two area system is connected together with a tie- D(pu MW/Hz) 8.33 *103 8.33 *103
line. To realize this in Simulink environment, a feedback loop PT (MW) 2000 2000
is used to generate the Area Control Error (ACE) signal. The H(sec) 5 5
signal in each area is composed of frequency and tie-line T22 Ptie max cos 30 Ptie max cos 30
error. The ACE for interconnected AGC area is given as [9]:
PT PT
ACEi = Ptie + B f i (1)
i Ptie- max (MW) 200 200
where Ptiei is the deviation of the tie-line power, fi is the R(Hz/ pu MW) 2.4 2.4
TG(sec) 0.08 0.08
change in frequency and Bi is the bais factor at each area i. TT(sec) 0.3 0.3
The overall two area interconnected thermal power system Tv (sec) 20 20
Kv(Hz/pu MW) 120 120
is shown in Fig.1. Pci , XGi , PGi are changes in governor set B 0.425 0.425

point, valve position, and generator mechanical output

respectively. TTi , TPi and TGi are the turbine, electric system
III. WAVELET TRANSFORM
and governor time constant. Also K Pi , Ri and T12 are
Wavelet Transform (WT) has been adopted in many power
respectively the electric system gain, the speed drop, and the system applications. Some of these are fault location on
tie-line synchronizing factor. The parameters of this model transmission lines, current harmonic mitigation, reactive
are given in Table 1. To simulate the LFC test system, a power compensation for Active Power Filters application etc
linearized mathematical model is used which includes both [11], [12]. The uniqueness of WT is its ability to transforming
the primary and secondary controller. a signal from the time domain to time-frequency domain.
1 Wavelet analysis is done using mother wavelets. The process
Pd1(s)+noise
1 of breaking up a signal into scaled and shifted versions of the
R1
P ( s ) mother wavelet using wavelet analysis is called
1 1 g1
K p1 f ( s )
1
decomposition. There are essentially two types of wavelet
1 + sT G 1 1 + s TT 1 1 + sTp1 decomposition: Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT) and
P ( s )
c1
X ( s )
g1 Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT). CWT is mainly used for
P ( s ) theory research, but DWT is more popular in the field of
tie
T12 s
engineering, because the observed time series are discrete in
P ( s ) real world. Wavelet analysis is capable of revealing aspects
P ( s ) 1 1 g2
K p2 f ( s )
c2
2 of data that other signal analysis techniques miss, aspects
1 + sT G 2 1 + sT T 2 1 + sTp 2 such as trends, breakdown points, discontinuities in higher
1 derivatives, and self similarity. Wavelet is able to compress
R2 X ( s )
g2
P ( s )
d2 and de noise a signal without appreciable degradation. The
2 results of wavelet transform are called wavelet coefficients
Fig.1. Two area LFC model and this can be grouped into two: approximate and detailed
coefficients. The approximations are the high-scale, and low-
The ACE for the secondary control generation unit is given as frequency coefficient components of the signal, and the
[10]: details are the low-scale, and high-frequency coefficient
components [13].

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 2017 IEEE PES-IAS PowerAfrica

The wavelet expansion of a signal, f ( x ) is given as:
f ( x ) = ai , j i , j ( x )
i, j
where i and j are integers, the functions i , j ( x ) is called the
generating or mother wavelet and the two-parameter
expansion coefficients ai , j are called the DWT coefficients of
f ( x ) . The coefficients are given by:
+ frequency. This error is used to generate the control signal
ai , j = f ( x ) i , j ( x )
The coefficients can be computed from the mother wavelet
through translation and scaling (dilation). The mother
wavelet is related to the scaling function as follows:
( x ) = 2 g ( k ) ( 2 x k )
k and derivative gain parameters of the PID controller. The
where g ( k ) = ( 1) h (1 k ) . h and g can be viewed as
k
A 4-level decomposition pyramid was found to be the
optimum decomposition level for the two area LFC
(4) application. The 4-leve decomposition of the input ACE
signal yields:
x(n ) = d1 + d 2 + d 3 + d 4 + a4 (9)
A. Formulating the DWT based Controller
PID controller has been used extensively in the power
industry for LFC application [5-6]. The input signal to the
PID controller is the error, in for example, speed or
(5) (u). The control signal can be expressed as:
de
u = K p e + K I e dt + K D (10)
dt
where K p , K i &K D are respectively the proportional, integral
(6)
low-frequency components of the error signal is captured by

the K p , K i &K D gains of the PID. Also the high frequency

filter coefficients of half band low-pass and high-pass filters
respectively. A l-level wavelet decomposition of a signal component is captured by the K D term.
f ( x ) can be computed as follows:
B. Validating the DWT controller.
l
f (x ) = al +1,k l +1,k (x ) + d l +1,k l +1,k (x ) (7) In order to evaluate the performance of the DWT, the signal
k l =0 integrity index analysis is performed which is used to validate
where coefficients al +1, n , and dl +1,n at scale l + 1 are the integrity of the controller. This index depicts the noiseless
and cleanness of the signal. The ACE signal is the input to the
approximate and detail coefficients respectively which can proposed dynamic wavelet based controller where the noise
be obtained if coefficients at scale l are available. These and other disturbance are filtered out. The index is formulated
coefficients are given by: and evaluated as follows:
al +1,n = al , k h ( k 2 n ) sumnoise = noisek (11)
(8)
d l +1, n = al , k g ( k 2n ) mean noise =
1
noisek (12)
The ACE signal when taken through wavelet analysis is k
decomposed into a high frequency component (detail) and a 1 1
low frequency component (approximation). SII = (13)
First, the ACE signal is passed through a discrete second sum( noisek ) mean( noisek )
order low pass filter (LP) with impulse response h(k) and a
high pass filter (HP) with impulse response g(k). This The main advantage of using this proposed technique is the
constitute the 1st level decomposition process where the flexibility and dynamic nature where at least two control gain
output of the HP is the detailed signal while that of the LP is parameters can be utilized as compared to the PID where the
the approximated signal. The process is continued using the parameters are restricted to at most three. Also dynamic WT
MRA pyramid until the fundamental frequency of the power based controller can filter out disturbance (noise) in the
system is obtained. The decomposition process is shown in power system thereby maintaining the integrity of the power
Fig. 2. network. The overall dynamic wavelet control is depicted in
Fig. 3.
Kd1

Kd N

.
Kd N 1

KaN

Fig. 2: The decomposition pyramid Tree of DWT. Fig. 3: Proposed Dynamic Wavelet Transform Controller

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 2017 IEEE PES-IAS PowerAfrica

IV. GENETIC ALGORITHM OPTIMIZATION controller, the signal integrity index (SII) is also calculated. It
Genetic Algorithm is an Artificial Intelligence optimization can be observed in Fig. 4 that the DWT-GA damped out most
techniques which computes optimization problems using of the noise with an SII of 0.998 as compared to 0.9105 and
random search technique [14]. When a large number of state 0.7357 for LPF and unfiltered (PI-GA) system respectively
space variables are being searched, GA offers a significant For Area 2 of the LFC, the same noise signal and a 0.1pu
performance and also does not make use of derivatives as load change was injected. From the Fig. 5, the proposed
compared to conventional optimization tools such as the non- DWT controller performed remarkably well achieving an SII
linear constrain optimization. The aim of GA optimization of 1.000. The indices for the LPF and unfiltered system were
technique is to imitate closely the process in natural system 0.8177 and 0.578 respectively.
for evolution. As a result of this phenomenon, competition is
created within members for a common resources. This in turn
results in the survival of the fittest dominating over the
weaker ones. The GA starts with initial population where
each individual of the decomposed signal is evaluated by the
fitness function also known as the objection function (u).
Through selection, crossover and mutation, a new set of
generation is produced from the old one [15]. This process is
repeated until the algorithm converges where all constraints is
satisfied.
Based on this unique property of GA, the algorithm is more Fig. 4: Signal intergrity index of area 1
likely to converge to a global optima value. GA is used in this
studies to search for the optimal gains of the PI and also the
proposed adaptive wavelet transform based controllers. In
both cases, the Integral Square error (ISE) is used to
determine the performance indices of the LFC. These indices
can be expressed as:

ISE = f12 + f 2 2 Ptie 2 (14)
0
To compute the optimum index parameters, both areas are
subjected to a step load change and case studies are
performed in the presence of white noise.

V. SIMULATIONS AND RESULTS Fig. 5: Signal integrity index for area 2

Three cases are presented to demonstrate the performance of
the scheme. The first case (Case 1) presents the validation of
the DWT-GA controller used for the LFC model using the
signal integrity index. The second case (case 2) shows the
performance of the proposed DWT-GA controller in filtering
out noise from the ACE signal. This is compared to the
conventional low pass filter. Lastly, in Case 3, the robustness
and resilience of the proposed controller is tested. This is
done by comparing the dynamic performance of the proposed
DWT-GA to GA-PI controller under load disturbance.
Case 1- Controller validation
Noise signal of high frequency component was injected with
a 0.1pu load change in both areas, and the ACE signal was
evaluated. The noise index was measured for the various
filters. From Fig. 4, it can be seen that the DWT-GA
controller performed remarkably well than the 2nd order LPF
and unfiltered PI-GA. The sum noise indices measured were
0.1754, 0.4887 and 0.812 for the proposed DWT-GA, PI-GA
and the unfiltered PI control schemes respectively. The sum
and mean noise indices are lower for the DWT-GA
controller. To further validate the integrity of the DWT
Case 2 - Performance of DWT-GA under Load Variation and
Noise condition
For this case, two conditions were simulation. The conditions
are (a) only area 1 had its load varied while both areas were
however subjected to noise, and (b) both areas were subjected
to load variation and noise. The results obtained for (a) are
presented in Fig. 6 to Fig. 8. It can be observed from Fig. 5
that, the proposed scheme is able to damp out the inter area
oscillations and the noise. Also, the frequency deviation and
the ACE signal was minimized to zero steady state error
within the shortest possible time. It can also be seen from the
Fig. 7 that the settling time and the overshoot was less with
the proposed wavelet technique. In (b), area 1 and 2 of the
LFC model were respectively subjected to a 0.2pu and 0.1pu
load variation. It can be observed that the proposed technique
is able to mitigate the inter area oscillation and maintain a
zero frequency deviation which conforms to IEEE Std 122
1985 for Steam Turbine-Generator Units [16]. This is
depicted in Fig. 8.

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 2017 IEEE PES-IAS PowerAfrica

0.6
Area 1
dynamic response shows the robustness and resilient of the
0.4 Area 2
DWT-GA based control scheme even in the presence of noise
0.2
and load variation.
0.3
0
Governor Load setpoint DWT Are a 1
DWT Are a 2
-0.2 0.25
ACE

-0.4 0.2

GovernorLoadSetpoint (pu)
-0.6
0.15

-0.8
0.1
-1
0.05
-1.2

0
-1.4
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Time

Fig. 6: ACE signal in a noisy condition with no filter -0.05

-0.1
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
0.6
Time (sec)

Fig. 9: Governor Load Set point using proposed DWT

Area 1
0.4 Area 2

0.2

0 0.05
GA
Area 1 DWT
-0.2
0
CE

-0.4
A

-0.6 -0.05

-0.8
-0.1

ACE(pu)
-1

-1.2 -0.15

-1.4
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Time (sec) -0.2

Fig. 7: ACE signal for proposed DWT-GA with presence of noise.

-0.25

0.5
Area 1
Area 2 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Time (sec)
0

Fig. 10: Area Control Error (ACE) for Area 1

-0.5
tio
evia n(Hz)

-1
encyD

Area 2 GA
0.05 DWT
qu

-1.5
Fre

-2

-0.05
ACE(pu)

-2.5

-0.1
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Time (se c)

Fig. 8: Frequency deviation with noise condition for different load variation -0.15

in area 1 and 2 using proposed controller -0.2

-0.25

Case 3 - Performance of Wavelet and GA-PI controllers 0 5 10 15 20 25 30

Time (sec)

The overall performance of the proposed DWT-GA based Fig. 11: Area Control Error (ACE) for Area 2
scheme is presented. The nominal load change demand is
applied to Area 1 only while in the next test case, a load
0.1
Area 1 GA

change of 0.2pu and 0.1pu is applied to area 1 and 2

DWT

respectively. It is noted clearly from Fig. 9 that the proposed

FrequencyDeviation(pu)

controller is able to provide a stable governor load set point -0.1

with no oscillations. Also the performance for frequency -0.2

deviation of the two areas, the ACE signal and the Ptie flow is
shown in Figs. 10 and 11 below. The proposed DWT-GA -0.3

control scheme is able to damp out the inter area oscillations -0.4

more quickly as compared to the GA-PI controller. Also, the

settling time and overshoot for the proposed scheme was -0.5
0 5 10 15 20 25 30

better than that of GA-PI where there were ripples present in

Time (sec)

Fig. 12: Frequency deviation for Area 1

the waveform even after a zero steady state error as seen in
Fig. 11 and Fig. 12. From Fig. 13 and Fig. 14, the frequency
deviation and tie-line power flow respectively, were
oscillating with a relatively large fluctuation for the GA-PI
scheme. Hence it took more time to settle the perturbation as
compared to the proposed scheme. The deviation was also
less prominent in the DWT-GA than that of the GA-PI. This

593
 2017 IEEE PES-IAS PowerAfrica

backtracking search algorithm," in 2015 International Conference on

Energy, Power and Environment: Towards Sustainable Growth
Area 2 GA
0.05 DWT

(ICEPE), 2015, pp. 1-6.

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