Balancing Cellular Autarky and System Frequency: An Inertia-Conscious Dispatch Concept

Limiting these metrics is essential for grid operation stability especially in low inertia power systems.

Instead of embedding full nonlinear dynamics in the dispatch problem, the method introduces conservative, tractable surrogate constraints derived from an aggregated swing-equation representation, parameterized by an online inertia estimate. Reserve deliverability is further constrained by linear network limits, yielding a dispatch-compatible optimization that balances reserve procurement/curtailment costs against explicit frequency-security requirements. To enable scalable and privacy-preserving operation, the centralized problem is decomposed into hierarchical electrical domains (“cells”) and coordinated via reserve budgets and corridor signals using an Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM)-based distributed scheme with limited information exchange. A time-domain simulation study on a realistic high-renewable 2045 test system demonstrates that the frequency-security–aware pre-dispatch substantially mitigates RoCoF extrema and improves the frequency nadir compared with a baseline without targeted reserve positioning.

The decentralized coordination achieves performance comparable to the centralized benchmark, indicating that effective reserve placement can be preserved under hierarchical decomposition, albeit with an identifiable opportunity-cost trade-off from reserving capacity for security.