Improving the Performance of AVR System Using Grasshopper Evolutionary Technique

Abstract

The design of the optimal controller with an appropriate setting of its parameters is very much essential for an automatic voltage regulator (AVR) system. Even though a lot of research has been undertaken in the past few decades, as no unanimously accepted methodology does not result yet, it is an open and very important field of research for designing an optimal controller for AVR. In this paper, an advanced version of the classical proportional-integral–differential (PID) control technique based on fractional calculus is designed titled as fractional order-PID control (FO-PID) controller for the AVR operation. The new strategy has been employed for computing the gain parameters of the controller unlike the conventional controller used generally in the real-time applications of an AVR. To enhance further the performance of FO-PID, a grasshopper evolutionary technique (GET) has been adapted for optimally setting the parameters for the enhanced performance of the controller. A comparative analysis of the proposed GET-FO-PID controller to justify its performance with conventional tuned PID controller using Ziegler–Nichols, Nelder Mead, and GET is presented and analyzed with. It has been demonstrated that the proposed approach produces a substantial improvement in the AVR system response with better controllability and stability. To justify the performance of the proposed GET-FO-PID controller including the AVR, time-domain analysis is also presented through MATLAB simulation.