Robust controller design for solar plant using extended Coefficient diagram method (CDM) incorporating PID

In this paper, a design of robust controller based on Coefficient diagram method is investigated, to be used to control the outlet temperature of a solar plant based on cylindrical-parabolic collectors. It is noted that although the responses of the control system satisfy both transient and steady state specifications, the transient response generally still has long response time. In order to improve the speed of the system response, a PID controller is added into the controller designed by CDM. The design of both of CDM and PID controllers is done with a linearization of the nonlinear uncertain system described by two Partial differential equations around an operating point of the real system, then the designed controllers will be applied to the nonlinear system. The simulation results show that the performance of the controller based on CDM combined with PID has short response time, with no overshoot and the best perturbation rejection properties.