Understanding automatic generation control

Abstract

The authors describe what automatic generation control (AGC) might be expected to do, and what may not be possible or expedient for it to do. The purposes and objectives of AGC are limited by physical elements involved in the process and, hence, the relevant characteristics of these elements are described. For reasons given, it is desired that AGC act slowly and deliberately over tens of seconds or a few minutes. From a perspective of utility operations, there is no particular economic or control purpose served by speeding up the AGC action.>