Automatic generation control of multi-area system using two Degree of Freedom Fractional Order PID Controller: A preliminary study

In this paper, Two-Degree-of-Freedom-Fractional Order-PID (2-DOF-FOPID) Controller is presented for automatic generation control of an interconnected three unequal area thermal system. Performances of different fractional order (FO) based classical controllers such as FOI, FOPI and FOPID are studied and compared with proposed 2-DOF-FOPID controller. Recently developed metaheuristic nature-inspired algorithm known as Firefly algorithm (FA) are used for the simultaneous optimization of several parameters of the controllers and speed regulation parameter (R) of the governor. Simulation results clearly reveal the superiority of the proposed 2-DOF-FOPID controller. Further, the performances of proposed controller are tested against higher degree of perturbation. It is observed that 2-DOF-FOPID controller perform far better than aforesaid FO controllers.