Towards the real time monitoring of AGC

Automatic Generation Control (AGC) is one of the ancillary services that have become important in the deregulated power system environment. Together with the fact that the load varies rapidly throughout the day, it is imperative to have a system that will maintain a continuous and reliable flow of power within the system. Long ago, system operators recognized this fact by requiring power tools to have units with AGC capability. By having AGC units, the operating generators will be able to keep track of load fluctuation by maintaining the difference between Area Control Error (ACE) and MW output response to a minimum. This is what is known as the regulation requirement for the AGC units to meet the load demand. Therefore, the paper addresses the need for a simple but very reliable method to compute the regulation compliance of the units in service.