For renewable energy penetration, a frequency control strategy is proposed to assure the multi-area hybrid power system stable operation. The load frequency control (LFC) and the battery energy storage system (BESS) are used together to design the frequency control strategy. Furthermore, in order to improve the control accuracy and reduce the battery capacity, the area control error and active power disturbance are divided into low-frequency components and high-frequency components. Therefore, LFC is designed by using sliding mode algorithm for the low-frequency deviation and BESS is adjusted by using the designed disturbance observer for the high-frequency disturbance. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed frequency control strategy is proved by the real-time digital simulator which can optimise the frequency quality and reduces the capacity of the BESS.