Combined frequency and voltage regulation in multi-area system using an equilibrium optimiser based non-integer controller with penetration of electric vehicles

Abstract

The frequency and terminal voltages in power systems are the two critical operating points that balance active and reactive powers, which must be maintained within predefined limits through automatic generation control (AGC) and automatic voltage regulator (AVR) control loops. To address this issue, in this manuscript, the problem of a combined AGC and AVR is solved using a non-integer order PID controller. Its parameters are adjusted using the recently proposed equilibrium optimiser (EO) technique. Along with conventional sources, renewable energy sources such as geothermal power plants and electric vehicles are considered. The EO-tuned non-integer order PID controller outperformed the traditional integer order PI and PID controllers in view of peak overshoots, undershoots and settling times. The performance of EO is evaluated and found superior against widely used particle swarm optimisation and firefly algorithms in the presence of non-integer order PID controller. Different case studies such as random load disturbance, the effect of nonlinearities, the impact of communication time delay and sensitivity analysis have been performed, which also test the heftiness of the non-integer order PID controller. The obtained results are verified using the real-time digital simulator OPAL-RT (OP4510) for nominal conditions.