Fully distributed security constrained optimal power flow with primary frequency control

•A fully distributed method that solves the preventive SCOPF problem with PFC is developed.•The proposed method is designed to solve problems on large scale interconnected transmission systems.•The ADMM solves the problem in parallel and guarantee the privacy and autonomy of the actors involved.•The separation of areas of the system can be efficiently integrated as a contingency scenario. Primary frequency control is the automatic mechanism implemented on power systems to regulate the power balance through frequency and hence, its action should be taken into account when modelling any contingency state leading to a modification of the active power balance (e.g. generator failures). This paper presents a fully distributed method to solve the DC security constrained power flow (DC-SCOPF) that takes into account the automatic primary frequency response of generators after an incident. In more detail, we extend existing distributed DC-SCOPF formulations by: (1) introducing a new variable representing the frequency deviation; and (2) enhancing the local problem of each generator to consider how it adjusts its production after each contingency according to its primary frequency control compensation factor. The computation of the frequency deviations in the DC-SCOPF problem is formulated into a suitable form (i.e. in the form of a general consensus problem) so that smaller problems, corresponding to individual sub-regions or actors, can be solved and coordinated via the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) in a distributed manner. In this way, actors of the system do not need to exchange any confidential information with other actors during the optimization procedure. A salient feature of our approach is that it can consider contingencies that lead to area separation without any prior specification of the topology and thus can adapt to many kinds of situations that are of interest in interconnected systems. Extensive simulation results on several standard IEEE systems show the good performance of the proposed model and algorithm in terms of convergence speed and accuracy as well as its capacity to deal with the disconnection of areas in interconnected systems.