Demand Side Management for Active Power Control of Autonomous Hybrid Power System

The maintenance of microgrid frequency at its nominal value is extremely essential to ensure its stable operation and also to maintain the quality of the system supply. This paper uses/implements direct load control under demand response in addition to automatic generation control to contain the deviations in frequency of the system. The proposed Matlab model of the microgrid is made up of the wind turbine generator (WTG), the diesel engine generator (DG) and some controllable loads such as refrigerator (REF), heat pump (HP) and plugged in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV), without any storage device. For controlling the controllable loads, an intelligent demand response (DR) controller is used to monitor and adjust the system frequency. The DR controllers used in this paper are the proportional plus integral (PI) controller and the proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller, the parameters of which are optimized using Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Firefly Algorithm (FF). Simulation studies on three different scenarios of abrupt generation change and load variation confirms that PID controller tuned with Firefly Algorithm gives better frequency regulatien.