Frequency Control of an Isolated Hydro Power Plant
Using Artificial Intelligence
Sukeeratpal Syan, Student Member,IEEE
Electrical and Instrumentation Engineering Department
Thapar University, India
sukeerats@gmail.com
Abstract—Frequency variation is a critical issue in power
systems. With the recent developments in power sector,
complexity and non-linearity of power system is increased to
higher degree. Conventional controllers are designed considering
linear power system models, therefore performance of these
controllers may be not suffice the requirement of state of art.
New strategies and controllers for controlling and monitoring of
hydro power generation are developed and came into
continuation with the conventional controllers like neural
networks, fuzzy, and hybrids which performs better.
In this paper, a new strategy is implemented for the control of
hydro-turbine (Francis type) for the synchronous generator to
attain the frequency in the prescribed limits at faster rate
whenever there is change in load. An intelligent controller is used
instead of conventional controller. In running condition,
proposed controller results in maximum frequency deviation of
0.3% above the reference frequency and reach in stable state at
faster rate when there is an unexpected load variation.
Keywords— Hydro turbine; synchronous generator; intelligent
controller; load variation; frequency.
I. INTRODUCTION
It is assumed that controlling active power and frequency
separately from voltage control is a better approximation for
the maneuver of power system. Active power and frequency
control are internally related to the control of reactive power
and voltage. Any deviation in system frequency is a sensitive
indicator of real-power imbalance. In past years, hydro-turbine
governing system has been well researched at vast extent.
Constancy and eminence of speed regulation is an important
phase in designing hydro power plant. A large interest is
developed in modern control theory for designing hydro-
turbine governing system. As hydro-turbine at rated speed is
responsible for maintaining the active power and rated
frequency, any change in load result in deviation of the speed
which directly deviate the rated frequency and leads to
asynchronism [1-2]. Deviation in frequency is permissible up
to some extent. But if frequency deviates more than
permissible limits, it leads damage to frequency dependent
components. For acceptable action of power system,
frequency should remain constant. Developing a suitable
controller and fine tuning the parameters based on
Gyan Ranjan Biswal, Member,IEEE
Electrical and Instrumentation Engineering Department
Thapar University, India
gyan.biswal@thapar.edu
mathematical models of control system is a primary concern
for frequency control and is discussed in [3-4]. A Suboptimal
regulator is designed using projective controls and the
procedure allows to design multivariable static and low-order
dynamic hydro turbine governor [3]. Optimal approach is used
to find different gains for governor and gains are switched
according to gate position and speed error magnitude [4].
Various methods for tuning the controller parameters are
described in [5]. Although complexity of modern power
system is increased, advance control strategies are also
proposed, for example, GA-based learning [6-7], adaptive and
self-tuning control [8] and frequency control under
deregulation market [9]. In [10], a fuzzy PI controller is
proposed for load frequency control and in [11], feedback of
averaged derivatives is used for load frequency control. A
detailed review of new strategies for AGC is given in [12].
Most power system models are non-linear but for tuning
conventional controllers they are linearized. ANN (Artificial
Neural Network) is well known approximator for the non-
linear systems and can approximate higher order functions.
Non-linear systems can also be controlled using ANN with
accuracy [15].Several good literatures are reported in this line
[17-18]. At the same time, this paper conducts its review
without considering the impact of control and monitoring
involves handling such complex operation.
The main purpose of present work is to design a controller
which can handle large load disturbances and if the operation
is either under-frequency or over-frequency, it should attain
constancy at faster rate so that isolated system should not have
to bear more losses. Considerable drop in frequency have
large effect on passive elements. Proposed controller is trained
offline in order to be compatible to a particular sized isolated
hydro power plant. Matlab/Simulink environment is used to
implement the proposed controller. The rest paper is ordered
as: Section II includes the modeling of turbine and effects of
speed deviation. Section III gives a brief preview of proposed
controller respectively. Results and simulation along with
discussion are in Section IV. Finally, conclusion is provided in
Section V.
Figure 1. Simulation setup for an isolated hydro power plant.

⎛L⎞ q
II. MATHEMATICAL MODELLING TW = ⎜ ⎟ base (4)
⎝ A ⎠ hbase g
A. Hydro-turbine
qbase is the water flow rate when gates are fully open (gate
Equation (1) represents the linear model of the turbine
used for tuning conventional controller. This model position G=1) and hbase is head of the turbine. Rate of flow
represents the basic characteristics of the hydraulic system. through turbine in per unit is given by:
Δ Pm 1 + (a11 − a13 a21 / a23 )Tw s q=G h (5)
= a23 (1) As turbine is not 100% efficient so mechanical power
ΔG 1 + a11Tw s
produced:
Nonlinear model developed is shown in Figure 2 [1],
Pm = At h(q − qnl ) − DT GΔω (6)
[13-14]. Fluid flowing through the conduit is assumed as
incompressible with length L and cross sectional area A, qnl is per unit no-load flow, DT Δω is speed deviation
Equation (2) provides rate of flow change. damping effect and At is the factor which converts the actual
gate position to effective gate position.
dq
dt
( )
= h0 − h − hl gA / L (2)
1
At = (7)
Where G FL −G NL
q = turbine flow rate, m3/sec GFL = gate opening at full load
A = penstock area, m2 GNL = gate opening at no load
L = penstock length, m
2
g = acceleration due to gravity, m/sec
h0 = static head water column, m
h = head at the turbine entrance, m
hl = loss due to friction in conduit, m
In per unit, equation (2) becomes
Figure 2. Non-linear Hydro turbine model.
dq ⎣⎡1 − h − hl ⎦⎤
= (3) B. Effect of load on frequency
dt TW
TW is water starting time and is defined as Instability in power system can be given by:
 d ωm Network architecture of the controller is shown in Figure
J = Ta = Tm − Te (8) 4and explained in Table I.
dt
Where, J comprises of generator and turbine’s consolidated
moment of inertia; ωm is the angular velocity of the rotor in
electrical rad/s, Ta, Tm and Te are the acceleration,
mechanical and electromagnetic torque respectively. Due to
load variation, the difference between both the torques Tm Figure 4. Architecture of Neural Controller.
and Te is not zero, the generator operating point will Table I Parameters of neural controller
oscillate to such an extent that it may affect synchronism Parameters Hidden Layer Output Layer
due to torque Ta. At equilibrium, Electromagnetic torque Number of neurons 10 1
(Te) is equal to mechanical torque (Tm) and results in
Activation function tansig() tansig()
accelerating torque Ta to be zero. Combined moment of
inertia is given by: Activation function tansig() returns the output squashed into
2H
J = 2 VAbase (9) range of [ −1,1] . As the system represented in Figure 1 is in
ω0 M per unit (p.u.) form so it is assumed that the speed
Substituting equation (9) in (8) gives deviation Δω = ωref − ωe is in range of [ −1,1] and the
d ⎛ω ⎞ Tm − Te regulators output is in range of [ 0,1] . With respect to the
2H ⎜ m ⎟ = (10)
dt ⎝ ω0 m ⎠ VAbase / ω0 m above said ranges, activation function tansig() is suitable for
In per unit form equation (10) is given by generic solution. A set of data is generated for training the
d ωr network. The data is divided into three parts randomly; one
2H = Tm − Te (11) part for training, second part for testing and third part for
dt validation. Training is done using Levenberg Marquardt
ω ωr / p f ωr algorithm which is faster than other algorithms [16]. As
ωr = m = = depicted from Figure 5, Mean squared error (MSE) achieved
ω0m ω0 / p f ω0
is 1.0427e-07 during training.
Where ω0 is rated speed of rotor, and p f is number of field
poles.
dδ
= ω r − ω0 = Δω r (12)
dt
d 2δ d ωr d (Δωr ) dω r d (Δω r )
2
= = = ω0 = ω0 (13)
dt dt dt dt dt
Substituting equation (13) to (11)
d 2δ dδ
2 H ω0 2 = Tm − Te − K D (14)
dt dt
where K D is a damping torque component. Torque (T) can
be replaced by power (P) using following relation:
P = ωr T (15) Figure 5. Training of neural controller

Neural controller takes rotor speed deviation Δω as input

and gives regulated output in the terms of actuating signal
for servo motor which controls the gate valve. The proposed
controller tries to eliminate the error to maintain constant
speed of turbine for constant frequency. Proposed neural
controller is positioned in place of PID controller as shown
Figure 3. Speed deviation with respect to change in load change. in Figure 6.
III. PROPOSED CONTROLLER
Proposed Controller is designed to establish a relationship
between turbine mechanical power and speed of rotor, and
to observe an incremental change between two variables as
addressed in equation (15). A two layer feedforward
network having one input and one output is proposed for
controlling the turbine mechanical power and speed. Neural
Controller is trained offline using Levenberg-Marquardt
algorithm [14]. There is no hard and fast rule for selecting
the architecture and number of neurons in neural network. Figure 6. Governing system with proposed controller.
 IV. SIMULATION AND RESULT
To exemplify the efficacy of the proposed controller,
MATLAB/Simulink platform is used. A complete model of
an isolated hydro power plant is developed taking into
account variable load conditions. A 200 MVA, 60 Hz salient
pole synchronous machine is providing power to 15MW
load as shown in Figure 1.Specifications of parameters for
the model are illustrated in Appendix. In this paper, two
case studies are done to illustrate the performance of neural
controller. A hydro turbine and governing system is
modeled in Figure 7 to provide mechanical power to the
synchronous machine, which contains a parallel form PID
controller for maintaining the speed of turbine at rated
value.
Figure 7. Hydro turbine governing model with conventional controller.
Regulated output from the controller is fed to the
servomotor which is modeled as a second order system. As
shown in Figure 8, speed limiter is provided to maintain the
maximum speed and the minimum speed that is, slightly
less than full speed and more than zero respectively.
Figure 8. Servomotor model.
Non-linear turbine model as explained in section II (A) is
modeled in Figure 9 assuming
Figure 9. Non-linear hydro turbine model.
Case I. Initially, synchronous generator is in steady state
condition with constant load. To test the impact of
load variation over the controller, at 4th second,
sudden increment of 100 MW load is applied for
the duration of 2 seconds. The additional load is
dropped at 6thsecond and then system is allowed to
settle down by the controller. As depicted in Figure
10, it is observed that with increased load,
operation of system becomes under-frequency at
4th second and therefore, more mechanical power is
provided by the controller to bring frequency to the
reference level. Response of both PID controller
and neural controller to the sudden load change is
compared.
Neural controller is able to control the variation in
frequency precisely, and able to settle down within
the prescribed limits in lesser time than that of the
PID controller. In case of PID controller, the upper
threshold limit of frequency (the maximum
overshoot) is reached to 62.25 Hz (that is, 60 Hz +
2.25 Hz, variation). In case of neural controller, the
maximum overshoot is only reached to 60.18 Hz
that is 0.18 Hz (0.3 percent) of deviation from the
desired frequency level against the variation in load
which is far less than that of PID controller (by 3.8
percent). It is clearly demonstrated that the PID
controller consumed considerable amount of time
to settle down itself against the variation in
frequency.
Figure 10. Response of governing mechanisms with 100 MW load increase
at 4th sec.
Figure 11.Response of governing mechanisms with 100 MW load increase
at 4th sec and 10 MW at 16th sec.
Case II. In addition to case I, a more complex environment
is created to test the robustness of both the
 controllers. An additional 10 MW load is added to
the system at the instant of 16th second from the
start of operation for the duration of 5 seconds, and
then removed at 21st second. From case I and
Figure 11, it is well illustrated that the effect of
additional load is smoothly bore by the neural
controller to maintain reference level as against the
second spike observed in case of PID controller.
Response of both PID and Neural controller to the
different load change can be seen in the Figure 11.
Maximum and minimum frequency attained
through PID is approximately 61.67 Hz and
50.3092 Hz whereas by neural controller is
60.1843Hz and 50.4755 Hz.
V. CONCLUSION
A study is presented for the robust control operation of
an isolated 200–MVA Francis type hydro-turbine set
coupled with a synchronous generator. Two case studies are
done with an objective to design a fast and robust controller
that is able to handle the frequency deviation because of
variation in load from 10 MW to 100 MW. In case-I, it is
observed that proposed controller is 3.5 percent more
efficient in handling the variation in frequency under
transient condition as against the conventional PID
controller. From case-II, it is also to be noticed that the
robustness of the presented neural controller is maintained
even after additional 10 MW load added during the transient
conditions. Performance of neural controller is also retained
at top when extra 10 MW load is suddenly applied under the
transient condition to test the effectiveness of the proposed
algorithm. However in present study, real time control
scheme is not considered.
APPENDIX
Generator:
Power (MVA) 200 MVA
Line to Line voltage 13800 V
Frequency 60 Hz
Inertia coefficient (H) 3.2
Pole pairs 2 [18]
Servomotor gain (Ka) 10/3
Servomotor time constant (Ta) 0.7
Water starting time 2.67(sec)
Minimum Gate opening Gmin 0.01(p.u.)
Maximum Gate opening Gmax 0.97518(p.u.)
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