  As power systems become more and more interconnected, the inter-area
oscillations has become a serious factor limiting large power transfer among
different areas. Underdamped (Undamped) inter-area oscillations may cause
system breakup and even lead to large-scale blackout. Traditional damping
controllers include Power System Stabilizer (PSS) and Flexible AC Transmission
System (FACTS) controller, which adds additional damping to the inter-area
oscillation modes by affecting the real power in an indirect manner. However,
the effectiveness of these controllers is restricted to the neighborhood of a
prescribed set of operating conditions. In this paper, decentralized robust
controllers are developed to improve the damping ratios of the inter-area
oscillation modes by directly affecting the real power through the turbine
governing system. The proposed control strategy requires only local signals and
is robust to the variations in operation condition and system topology. The
effectiveness of the proposed robust controllers is illustrated by detailed
case studies on two different test systems.
