Abstract
In modern power systems, the implementation of load-frequency control (LFC) must reconcile continuous-time plant dynamics with discrete-time digital controllers operating under coarsely sampled communications. This paper develops a sampled-data framework for PI-type secondary LFC that explicitly accounts for aperiodic sampling and reduced inertia due to high wind penetration. Using a two-sided looped Lyapunov functional and free-matrix inequalities, sampling-interval-dependent linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) are derived for stability, performance and an exponential decay rate (EDR). The synthesis returns PI gains and the admissible maximum sampling period (MASP) via simple bisection. Numerical examples based on one-area, two-area, and three-area power systems demonstrate that the proposed stability conditions allow larger admissible sampling periods compared with existing approaches, while preserving satisfactory dynamic behaviour under different operating scenarios.