  Frequency restoration in power systems is conventionally performed by
broadcasting a centralized signal to local controllers. As a result of the
energy transition, technological advances, and the scientific interest in
distributed control and optimization methods, a plethora of distributed
frequency control strategies have been proposed recently that rely on
communication amongst local controllers.
  In this paper we propose a fully decentralized leaky integral controller for
frequency restoration that is derived from a classic lag element. We study
steady-state, asymptotic optimality, nominal stability, input-to-state
stability, noise rejection, transient performance, and robustness properties of
this controller in closed loop with a nonlinear and multivariable power system
model. We demonstrate that the leaky integral controller can strike an
acceptable trade-off between performance and robustness as well as between
asymptotic disturbance rejection and transient convergence rate by tuning its
DC gain and time constant. We compare our findings to conventional
decentralized integral control and distributed-averaging-based integral control
in theory and simulations.
