A study on load frequency control for a hybrid power plant

Intermittent nature of renewable energy sources (RESs) greatly influences power generation in a RESs interfaced generating plant. So, in addition to load variations, RESs have an adverse effect on system frequency in such plant. This paper presents a study on load frequency control (LFC) performance in a hybrid power system, where the RESs such as solar photovoltaic (SPV), wind turbine generator (WTG), etc., are integrated to conventional energy sources. Proportional-integral-differential (PID) controllers have been used for LFC and Firefly algorithm (FA) is applied for optimization of the controller parameters. The study expose that FA tuned PID controller provides acceptable dynamics. However, accomplishment of the proposed LFC is mostly dependent on tuning of the controller gains.