Output voltage regulation of synchronous generator using PSO algorithm-based PI controller

Abstract

In this paper a regulation of the terminal voltage of synchronous generator (SG) has been developed. Here, the nonlinear model of the SG is used directly without requirement for a linearized mathematical model of the generator. A proportional integral PI-controller is used to adjust the duty cycle of the DC chopper of step-down type for controlling the field voltage and consequently the output voltage of the generator. Furthermore, Particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is employed as an optimization technique for tuning the optimal parameters of the PI controller (Kp and Ki). This is achieved by the minimization of the quadratic output error between the reference voltage and the output voltage calculated from the adopted model at the same time. In order to test the performance of the PSO-PI controller, results are compared with the genetic algorithm (GA). Moreover, to reduce the overshoot resulting in the response of the terminal voltage, a varied reference voltage is adopted. Results obtained show the superiority of the varied reference voltage to decrease the overshoot versus the fixed reference voltage.