Differential evolution algorithm based tilt integral derivative control for LFC problem of an interconnected hydro-thermal power system

Conventional control techniques such as proportional integral (PI) control and proportional integral derivative (PID) control are widely used as the load frequency controller in power system control applications; however, the increase in complexity of the power system is degrading the performance of classical control. Therefore, in this paper a new control approach using fractional calculus has been proposed for the load frequency control problem of two-area hydro-thermal power system. The paper presents an interconnected hydro-thermal power system working under different operating conditions introduced in the form of various nonlinearities. Four case studies have been presented in this paper considering transient analysis with (i) different loading conditions, (ii) parameter variations, (iii) different nonlinearities (governor dead band nonlinearity, time delay and generation rate constraints), and (iv) superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) device. A tilt integral derivative (TID) control has been presented as a secondary controller to stabilize the frequency deviations occurring in the two-area power system with the above-mentioned different operating conditions. The parameters of TID controller have been optimized using a differential evolution algorithm which solves an optimization problem formulated using the integral of time-weighted absolute error (ITAE) performance index. In addition, a comparison of dynamic system response obtained using TID control and PID control has been presented, which focusses on the better performance of TID control over PID control in an interconnected power system.