Synchronization of power networks without and with communication infrastructures

The synchronization of power grid is studied by employing a simple model for the dynamics of generators. The interactions among generators and feedback control are represented by terms in the swing equation. When there is no communication network feeding back the wide area measurement, the system stability is determined by the largest eigenvalue of the Laplacian matrix of the graph of the power network. When communication network is built such that control can be taken according to the measurement conveyed by the communication network, the system stability is determined by the largest eigenvalue of the weighted sum of the Laplacian matrices of the power network and communication network. The design of the communication network is studied by considering the greedy addition of communication links. Both exhaustive search and Rayleigh quotient approximation approaches are used for the communication network design. Numerical simulations for a 39-bus system are used for demonstrating the performance of the network design algorithms.