Parallel simultaneous and coordinated tuning of PSSs using Ant Colony Optimization

Power system controllers are typically designed using trial-and-error techniques, which may require large effort and time from the part of the designer to find a satisfactory solution. This work proposes an algorithm to perform a simultaneous and coordinated tuning of the controllers (PSSs) in an automatic form. To perform this tuning, the algorithm uses an optimization technique based on ant colony metaheuristic. In addition, a parallel structure for the algorithm is proposed to minimize the computation time. Results show satisfactory performance of the tuned controllers, evidencing the effectiveness of the proposed technique. Furthermore, a significant productivity gain can be achieved if the engineer in charge of this design only supervises the automatic process, instead of performing all calculations himself/herself.