Majlesi Journal of Energy Management Vol .4, No .

1, March 2015

Automatic Generation Control of Interconnected

HydroThermal System Using Metaheuristic Methods
Hatef Farshi1, Seyed Jalal Seyed Shenava2, Amin Sadeghzadeh3
1- Department of Electrical Engineering, Mohaghegh Ardabili University, Ardabil, Iran
hateffarshi@gmail.com
2- Department of Electrical Engineering, Mohaghegh Ardabili University, Ardabil, Iran
jshenava@gmail.com
3- Department of Electrical Engineering, Mohaghegh Ardabili University, Ardabil, Iran
Amin_sadegzadeh@yahoo.com

Received: August 2014 Revised: December 2014 Accepted: January 2015

ABSTRACT
Design of Automatic Generation Control (AGC) plays a vital role in automation of power system. In this paper,
determination of the Proportional-Integral-Derivate (PID) controller parameters with three optimization algorithms
such as Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA)
for AGC of two-area interconnected hydro thermal power system is investigated. The hydro and thermal areas are
comprised with an electric governor and reheat turbine, respectively. The designed PID controller with the proposed
approaches is simulated in MATLAB/SIMULINK and their results compared with each other and some previous
studies.

KEYWORDS: Automatic Generation Control (AGC), PID controller, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Genetic
Algorithm (GA), Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA)

1. INTRODUCTION In [1], the hydrothermal power system with I

In the power system, numbers of utilities are
interconnected together through tie-lines by which
power is exchanged between them. Any sudden load
perturbation in power system can cause variation in tie-
line power interchange and frequency. So inputs to
generators must be continuously regulated in order
to match the active power demand. Hence,
Automatic Generation Control (AGC), which may be
defined as the scheme used to restore frequency and
tie-line power to the normal value by adjusting the
generation automatically when there is continuous
change in the system load, is used in the power system
to keep frequency of control areas at its nominal
value and tie-line power exchange for different
control areas at their scheduled values. It should
also be noted that in large interconnected power
system, regulation by using manual methods is not
feasible, so AGC equipment are installed for each
generator in the power system. The controllers are
set for particular operating conditions and they take
care of small changes in load demand. By elapsing of
time, as the change in load demand becomes large, the
controllers must be reset either manually or
automatically [1-5].
and PI controller has investigated and in [2] in addition
to I and PI controller, GA method has also investigated.
By using I and PI controllers, zero steady state
frequency deviation can be achieved but they give
poor dynamic responses. Therefore, in this paper, we
will use the PID controller because it is a powerful
controller for improving transient and steady state
responses and we will optimize its parameters with
three mentioned optimization algorithms
.
2. DYNAMIC MODELING OF
INTERCONNECTED HYDROTHERMAL
SYSTEM
Modern power system normally consists of a number
of subsystems interconnected through tie lines. The
investigated AGC system consists of two generating
areas of equal size, area 1 comprising a reheat thermal
system and area 2 comprising a hydro system. A
simplified two-area interconnected power system
model is shown in figure 1. The hydro area is
comprised with an electric governor and thermal area is
comprised with reheat turbine. Generation Rate
Constraint (GRC), which is used to restrict the turbine
generation rate, is 3% p.u. MW/min for thermal area
and 270% p.u. MW/min for rising and 360% p.u.

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Majlesi Journal of Energy Management Vol .4, No .1, March 2015

MW/min for lowering generation in hydro area.
Generally, ACE (Area Control Error) signal is not
available in continuous form therefore zero order
hold is used before controller. The AGC model with
reheat turbine in thermal area and electric governor in
hydro area is shown in figure 2. Also, nomenclature for
various symbols is given in Appendix.
algorithm, the countries are divided into two categories;
colony and imperialist. Each imperialist, depending on
its strength, controls a number of colonies whose
colonizes. Assimilation policy and imperialist
competitive constitute the main part of this algorithm.
In presenting this algorithm, this policy is done by
moving colonies of an empire according to a special
equation. Figure 3 shows this movement. According to
figure (3), X and  are uniformly distributed random
numbers which formulated as follows:
[6, 7]
X~U(0,×d) 
U(- 

Imperialist

Figure 1. Simplified two -area

interconnected power system
New Position
of Colony
x
d

Colony

Figure 3. Colonies movement towards

imperialist (assimilation policy)

Where, 1<<2, d is the distance between

colony and imperialist and  is the parameter that adjust
the deviation from the main path. The values of ICA
parameters are set according to table I.

TAB LE I. IC A PAR AME TERS

Parameters Value
Number of Countries 50
Number of Imperials 10
Max Decades 90
 1.7
Figure 2. System model for two -area
interconnected power system =zeta 0.35
P Revolution 0.35
3. OPTIMIZATION OF THE DESIGNED
CONTROLLER B. Genetic Algorithm (GA)
In this paper, three optimization algorithms GA is a repetitive search way that operates on a set
including PSO, GA and ICA are used to optimize the of strings called chromosomes. This is a powerful
parameters of PID controllers. algorithm to adjust the designed controller parameters
A. Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA) in the following process: [8, 9]
Imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA), which is  Initialize the binary chromosome strings of np
used to adjust the designed controller parameters, is a population.
method in evolutionary computation to find the optimal  Decode the strings and assess the figure of
solution of different optimization problems. In this demerit of each string.

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Majlesi Journal of Energy Management Vol .4, No .1, March 2015

 Choose the best strings to increase the figure compared with each other. It should be noted that the
of demerit from minimum value. red, blue and green diagrams are related to GA, PSO
 Copy the best strings and paste them on the and ICA respectively. The insets show the more
non-selected strings. detailed responses.
 Combine and develop it to generate off
strings.
 Update the genetic cycle and stop the process.
The values of GA parameters are set according to table
II.

TABLE II. GA PARAMETERS

Parameters Value
Population size 100
Number of Iteration 100
Parents (off springs) Ratio 0.9
Mutants Population size Ratio 0.02
Tournament Selection size 3
Selection pressure 10 Fi gure 4. Frequenc y deviation in area one for
three mention ed algorithms
C. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO)
In this algorithm, there are a number of birds which
called particles and they are distributed in the search
space function that try to minimize (or optimize) their
amount. Also, The PSO is appropriate to solve the
complicated problems which have several local optimal
solutions [10]. PSO algorithm parameters are set
according to table III.

TABLE III. PSO PARAMETERS

Parameters
Population size
number of iteration
PSO parameter C1
PSO parameter C2
Value
100
90
2 Figure 5. Frequency deviation in area two for three
2 mentioned algorithms

PSO momentum or inertia 0.9

D. Objective Function
For the system mentioned in Figure 2, the goal is to
find the best control strategy. Therefore, in this paper,
the above algorithms are used to optimize the PID
controller parameters. And the objective function is as
follows:
J=∫(f12+f22+Ptie2)       
Ptie, f1 and f2 are considered as errors and 1%
step load perturbation, which shown with gain in each
area, is considered in either thermal or hydro area.

4. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

In this paper, the values of PID parameters in both
areas are optimized by three optimization algorithms Figure 6. Tie-line power deviation for three mentioned
and their results are shown. The dynamic responses of algorithms
frequency and tie-line power deviation by these
algorithms are shown in figures 4, 5, 6 and they are

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Majlesi Journal of Energy Management Vol .4, No .1, March 2015

The detailed information for each algorithm is
shown in tables IV, V and VI. As shown in tables, the
settling time of PSO has about 7% and 36%
improvement than GA and ICA for frequency deviation
of both areas, respectively. For tie-line power
deviation, ICA's settling time has about 19%
improvement in comparison with GA and PSO. The
best undershoots (min value) for frequency deviation of
area one are respectively related to ICA, PSO and GA
while for frequency deviation of area two, they are vice
versa. It means GA, PSO and ICA have the best
undershoot responses for frequency deviation of area
two. PSO has better undershoot compared with ICA
and GA for tie-line power deviation. The best
overshoot (max value) is related to ICA for frequency
deviation of both areas and the best one for tie-line
power deviation is related to PSO.
By observing the above tables and [11], we
can conclude the best settling time is related to PSO for
frequency deviation of area 1 and 2, e.g. about 7.5%
and 21.5% improvement in comparison with fuzzy
logic controller [11] for deltaf1 and deltaf2
respectively, but the settling time of each three
algorithms is not better than [11] for tie-line power
deviation. Also, it's understood that the overshoot and
undershoot responses of these three algorithms are
better than [1]. For example, there are about 27%, 41%
and 220% improvement for undershoot of deltaf1,
deltaf2 and deltaPtie, respectively.
Cost functions of these three algorithms are
shown in figures 7, 8 and 9.

TABLE IV. DETAILED INFORMATION FOR GA.

Genetic Algorithm (GA)

Info Deltaf 1 Deltaf 2 DeltaPtie

Settling Time 29.8794 29.1098 57.5914

Min Value -0.0472 -0.0470 -9.8823e-04
Min Time 1.3092 1.0125 2.8309
Max Value 5.8105e-07 1.0112e-06 0.0016
Max Time 98.6859 99.7671 6.1820

TABLE V. DETAILED INFORMATION FOR PSO.

Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO)

Info
Deltaf 1 Deltaf 2 DeltaPtie

Settling Time 27.9050 27.1110 57.4250

Figure 7. GA cost function.
Min Value -0.0465 -0.0471 -9.2527e-04
Min Time 1.2722 1.0190 2.7378
Max Value 1.6453e-06 1.6647e-06 0.0014
Max Time 98.6781 99.7240 6.1805

TABLE VI. DETAILED INFORMATION FOR ICA.

Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (ICA)

Info
Deltaf 1 Deltaf 2 DeltaPtie

Settling Time 37.9294 37.1569 48.4232

Min Value -0.0458 -0.0475 -9.4181e-04
Min Time 1.1901 1.0566 2.5068
Max Value 0 0 0.0018
Max Time 0 0 8.1472

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Majlesi Journal of Energy Management Vol .4, No .1, March 2015

APPENDIX
Symbol Explanation Value

f Nominal system frequency 60 Hz

i Subscript referred to area i 1, 2
Pri Area rated Power 2000MW
Hi Inertia constant 5sec
Delta PDi load change in area i -
Delta Ptie Tie-line power -
Di delta PDi/ delta fi 8.33x10-3 Pu MW/
Hz
T12 Synchronizing coefficient 0.086 Pu MW/radians
Ri Governor speed regulation 2.4 Hz/Pu MW
parameter
Tg Steam governor time constant 0.08 sec
Kr Steam turbine reheat constant 0.5
Tr Steam turbine reheat time 10 sec
constant
Figure 8. PSO cost function. Tt Steam turbine time constant 0.3 sec

Bi Frequency bias constant 0.424

Tpi 2Hi/fDi 20 sec
Kpi 1/Di 120 Hz/Pu MW
KIi Integral gain -
KPi Proportional gain -
KDi Derivative gain -
Kd Electric governor derivative 4
gain
Kp Electric governor proportional 1
gain
Ki Electric governor integral 5
gain
Tw Water starting time 1 sec
ACEi Area control error of area i -
a12 −Pr1/Pr2 -1
J Cost index -
fi Frequency deviation in Area i -

Figure 9. ICA cost function.

5. CONCLUSION
In this paper, the PID controller has employed for
AGC of hydrothermal power system and its parameters
have determined by three metaheuristic methods; GA,
PSO and ICA. Then, AGC model has simulated in
MATLAB/SIMULINK and their results have compared
with each other and some previous studies. It has
shown that e.g. PSO has better response than GA, ICA
and [11] in settling time but consequently we can't say
which method is better than the others.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We would like to express our very great
appreciation to Dr. Seyed Jalal Seyed Shenava for his
valuable and constructive suggestions during this
research work. We would also like to thank our friend,
Vadood Hajbani, for his great help and guidance.
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