A Dynamic Firefly Algorithm-Based Fractional Order Fuzzy-PID Approach for the Control of a Heavy-Duty Gas Turbine

Abstract

Heavy duty gas turbines have long played an important role in energy production. Advanced turbine designs are expected to be highly efficient, able to quickly ramp the output power up and down and promptly tolerate loading variations without breaching emissions regulations. Control design plays an important role in ensuring high efficiency and performance of gas turbines. This paper proposes a fractional order fuzzy-PID approach for a heavy-duty gas turbine. The controller gains are optimized using a Firefly algorithm enhanced with a dynamic parameter selection. This latter is used to speed up the convergence rate of the Firefly algorithm, optimize the gains of the fractional order fuzzy-PID and enhance the performance and efficiency of the gas turbine. The proposed approach is implemented to the speed loop of a gas turbine in order to maintain the output temperature and the turbine’s speed within their desired values during either a sudden change in loading or a drop in frequency. A comparison analysis with a standard Firefly algorithm-based approach was carried out to further assess the performance of the proposed evolved firefly algorithm-based approach.