FOPID controller for Load Frequency Control of Hybrid Power System under Deregulated regime using Improved Firefly Algorithm (IFA)

The proposed work primarily focuses on keeping frequency fluctuations and Tie-Line (TL) power exchange with area control error (ACE) within acceptable limits when subjected to various load changes. Electricity sector deregulation has resulted in the development of new enterprises for power generation, transmission, and distribution. Deregulation produces a highly competitive and dispersed control environment, making load frequency control (LFC) considerably more difficult when wind turbines are included in the system. Because oscillation damping is required for better system performance with frequency and tie-line power fluctuations, proper tuning of Fractional Order PID (FO-PID) controllers is critical. A new Improved Firefly Algorithm (IFA) has been developed and used for tuning different parameters of the controllers installed in each area by minimizing the Integral Time Multiplied by Absolute Error (ITAE) performance index as an objective function to improve the performance of the FOPID controller. Different operating scenarios were created and tested in MATLAB/SIMULINK to evaluate the usefulness of the suggested controller concept for various power agreements between GENCOs and DISCOs, such as Poolco and Bilateral power contracts. To validate the resilience and efficacy of the IFA-driven FOPID controller, a comparison is made in terms of overshoot/undershoot and settling time for all variables under various operating changes with the previously described Firefly algorithm and PSO-based FOPID controllers.