Tuning power system stabilizers to damp intra-plant modes using an automatic procedure

The problem of intra-plant modes is characterized by the oscillation of the machines within a power station against each other. These modes are usually well-damped, but improper settings for the parameters for power system stabilizers (PSSs), aiming at enhancing the damping of local modes, for example, can reduce the damping of the intra-plant modes. This possibility must be avoided by a careful tuning of the stabilizers, over a model that is able to represent the intra-plant modes. This tuning process may be involved and time-consuming, requiring many hours of work from a specialist. In this paper, we present a computerized algorithm that is capable of performing this process with minimum intervention of the human designer (therefore alleviating the burden of PSS tuning for the engineer and placing most of it on the computer) and apply it to find a PSS tuning to damp both local and intra-plant modes of the same plant. As shown in the paper, the algorithm is capable of tuning PSSs for several operating conditions at once, which may also result in better tuning when compared to sequential approaches.