“PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF ACO BASED PID CONTROLLER IN AVR

SYSTEM”.

1) Title of Topic: - “PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF ACO BASED

PID CONTROLLER IN AVR SYSTEM”.

2) Name of Student: - Mr. Prasad Jaysing Yadav

3) Name of Department: - Electrical Engineering Department.

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“PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF ACO BASED PID CONTROLLER IN AVR
SYSTEM”.

1) INTRODUCTION:
The quality and stability of the power supply are the important factors for the generating
system. To optimize the performance of electrical equipment, it is important to ensure the
quality of the electric power. During the transportation, both the active power balance and the
reactive power balance must be maintained between the generation and utilization of AC
power. These two balances correspond to two equilibrium points: frequency and voltage.
When either of the two balances is broken and reset at a new level, the equilibrium points will
float. A good quality of the electric power system requires both the frequency and voltage to
remain at standard values during operation. Control system plays an important role in
maintaining these power system parameters. The first attempt in the area of AGC has been
used to control the frequency of a power system via the fly wheel governor of the
synchronous machine. The turbine-governor technique was subsequently insufficient and a
supplementary control was included to the governor with the help of a signal directly
proportional to the frequency deviation. Based on the experiences with actual implementation
of AGC schemes, modifications to the definition of Area Control Error (ACE) are suggested
from time to time to cope with the change in a power system environment. The daily load
cycle changes significantly and hence fixed gain controllers will fail to provide best
performance under a wide range of operating conditions. Power systems are subject to
constant changes due to loading conditions, disturbances or structural changes. Controllers
are designed to stabilize or enhance the stability of the system under these conditions.
However, in general, each controller is designed for a specific situation or scenario and is
effective under these particular conditions. Hence, it is desirable to increase the capability of
PID controllers to suit the needs of present day applications. A PID controller improves the
transient response of a system by reducing the overshoot and settling time of a system. The
main reasons to develop better methods to design PID controllers are because of the
significant impact on the performance improvement. The performance index adopted for
problem formulation is settling time, overshoot and oscillations. The primary design goal is
to obtain a good load disturbance response by optimally selecting the PID controller
parameters. Traditionally, the control parameters have been obtained by trial and error
approach, which consumes more amounts of time in optimizing the choice of gains. To
reduce the complexity in tuning PID parameters, Evolutionary computation techniques can be
used to solve a wide range of practical problems including optimization and design of PID

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gains. It can obtain suboptimal solutions for very difficult problems which conventional
methods fail to produce in reasonable time. Evolutionary algorithms can be a useful paradigm
and provide promising results for solving complex optimization functions. Evolutionary
computation refers to the study of computational systems that use ideas to draw inspirations
from natural evolution.

2) LITERATURE VIEW
Evolutionary algorithms like Genetic Algorithm (GA), Simulated Annealing (SA), and
Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) has been employed in
control applications to efficiently search global optimum solutions. Zwe-Lee Gaing (2004)
have presented PSO for optimum design of PID controller in AVR system. The simulation
results proved the proposed method was indeed more efficient and robust in improving the
step response of an AVR system [37]. Yoshida et al (1999) proposed PSO for reactive power
and voltage control considering voltage stability. The results reveal that the proposed method
generates a solution very near to the global optimum solution [30]. Miranda and Fonseca
(2002) developed new Evolutionary PSO for voltage/AVR control. The simulation results
obtained indicate that it can obtain high quality solutions with shorter calculation time [38].
Chatterjee et al (2006) incorporated PSO for intelligent control of AVR system. It has been
revealed that PSO exhibits better transient performance and can be successfully applied to
obtain on-line responses[]. Wong et al (2009) proposed PSO-PID controller design for AVR
system with new fitness function. From simulation and comparison results, it can be seen that
the proposed PSO algorithm finds high quality solutions and demonstrates better control
performance[]. Yousuf et al (2009) developed PSO based predictive non-linear single area
automatic generation control. The simulation results show improvement over the response
characteristics and signify the strengths of the proposed scheme [40]. Rohit Kumar (2003)
presented PSO based approach to solve the economic load dispatch with line flows and
voltage constraints, and concluded that the proposed approach is computationally faster than
GA[]. Zhao et al (2005) proposed PSO approach based on the multi-agent system to solve
reactive power dispatch problem. The results indicate the possibility of PSO as a practical
tool for various optimization problems in the power system. Another meta-heuristic technique
used for combinatorial optimization problems is the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO)
algorithm that has been inspired by the foraging behavior of real ants[]. Ying-Tung Hsiao

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(2004) proposed an optimum approach for designing of PID controllers using ACO to
minimize the integral absolute control error. The experiment results demonstrate that better
control performance can be achieved in comparison with conventional PID method[]. Duan
Hai-bin (2006) presented a novel parameter optimization strategy for PID controller using
ACO Algorithm. The algorithm has been applied to the combinatorial optimization problem,
and the results indicate high precision of control and quick response[]. Shyh-Jier Huang
(2001) proposed ACO based optimization approach for enhancing hydroelectric generation
scheduling. Test results demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of the method for the
application considered[]. Boubertakh et al (2009) developed ACO for tuning PID controllers
and illustrated the efficiency of the proposed method by simulation examples[]. Hong He et
al (2009) designed ACO based PID parameter optimization to increase the search speed for
PID parameter optimization. Simulation results show the validity of this algorithm, and the
methodology adapted to overcome the drawbacks of traditional PID parameter
optimization[]. Girirajkumar (2009) presented the application of ACO algorithm to optimize
the PID parameters in the design of PID controller. The results presented prove the
improvement of ACO-PID controller and its stability over different operating conditions. In
this research, an efficient optimization algorithm is proposed using PSO and ACO for tuning
the optimal gains of PID controllers used for LFC and AVR of Power generating systems.
Surya Prakash , S.K. Sinha (2012) have presented analysis on dynamic performance of Load
Frequency Control (LFC) of three area interconnected hydrothermal reheat power system by
the use of Artificial Intelligent and PI Controller[1]. Mohd. Rozely Kalil, Ismail
Musirin(2006) proposed the application of Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) technique for
searching the optimal point of maximum loadability point at a load bus[2]. Hamid
Boubertakh, Mohamed Tadjine, Pierre-Yves Glorennec and Salim Labiod (2009) has
proposed theory that although conventional PID controllers are the most used in the industrial
process, their performance is often limited when it is poorly tuned and/or used for controlling
highly complex processes with nonlinearities, complex dynamic behaviors, imprecise or
uncertain mathematical models. The industrial process, their performance is often limited
when it is poorly tuned and/or used for controlling highly complex processes with
nonlinearities, complex dynamic behaviors, imprecise or uncertain mathematical models[3].
Nazli Madinehi, Kiarash Shaloudegi, Mehrdad Abedi, Hossein Askarian Abyaneh(2011)
developed method of amplifier limitation block to consider nonlinear conditions. In this way,

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they would have more realistic results [5]. Hany M. Hasanien(2013) presented a novel
optimal design of the PID controller in the AVR system by using the Taguchi combined
genetic algorithm (TCGA) method[6-7]. S. Dadvandipour, N. Khalili Dizaji, S. Rosshan
Entezar(2015)proved that using imperialist competitive algorithm based fuzzy logic (FICA),
to control an automatic voltage regulator (AVR) in order to increase the stability and obtain
more controllability of the system[9]. Yibao Chen, Zhong Guo, Jiaguang Liu(2015) proved
that Ant Colony Algorithm is a way of heuristic, which adopts parallel computation
mechanism, characterized with strong robust[28]. Hamid Boubertakh, Mohamed Tadjine,
Pierre-Yves Glorennec and Salim Labiod (2009) have proposed theory Ant colony
optimization (ACO) is one of the swarm intelligence (SI) techniques. It is a bio-inspired
optimization method that has proven its success through various combinatorial optimization
problems [27]. Ying-Tung Hsiao (2004) proposed a solution algorithm based on the ant
colony optimization technique to determine the parameters of the PID controller for getting a
well performance for a given plant. Simulation results demonstrate that better control
performance can be achieved in comparison with known methods [26]. Shyh-Jier Huang
(2001) proposed a method employing ant colony system (ACS) algorithm is to solve
hydroelectric generation scheduling. The merits of ACS are parallel search and optimization
capabilities, which ware inspired by the observation of the behaviors of ant colonies [25]. A.
A. Abou El-Ela, A. M. Kinawy and M. T. Mouwafi(2010) proposed self-adapted real coded
genetic algorithm (SARGA) to solve optimal reactive power dispatch (ORPD) problem. The
self-adaptation in real coded genetic algorithm (RGA) introduced by applying the simulated
binary crossover (SBX) operator, binary tournament selection and polynomial mutation. The
problem formulation involves continuous (generator voltages), discrete (transformer tap
ratios) and binary (VAR sources) decision variables [24]. A. Abou El-Ela, A. M. Kinawy
(2011) proposed work shows that simulation results are compared with those of conventional
linear programming, genetic algorithm, and particle swarm optimization Technique [22].

3) BASIC CONCEPTS OF ACO ALGORITHM

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) was introduced around 1991-1992 by M. Dorigo and
colleagues as a novel nature-inspired meta-heuristic for the solution of hard combinatorial
optimization problems (Dorigo and Blum 2005), (Dorigo et al 1999). In this algorithm,
computational resources are allocated to a set of relatively simple agents that exploit a form

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of indirect communication mediated by the environment to find the shortest path from the ant
nest to a set target. While walking, Ants can follow through to a food source because, they
deposit pheromone on the ground, and they have a probabilistic preference for paths with a
larger amount of pheromone.

Figure 1 Behavior of Real Ants in Finding Shortest Path

As shown in Figure 1, ants arrive at a point where they have to decide whether to turn left or
right. Since they have no clue of which is the better choice, they choose randomly. It can be
expected that, on an average, half of the ants decide to turn left and the other half to turn
right. This happens both to ants moving from left to right and to those moving from right to
left Figure 1(a) and (c) show what happens in the immediate instants, supposing all ants walk
at approximately the same speed. The number of lines is roughly proportional to the amount
of pheromone that the ants have deposited. Since the lower path is shorter than the upper one,
more ants will visit it on average, and therefore, pheromone accumulates faster. After a short
period, the difference in the amount of pheromone on the two paths is large enough to
influence the decision of new ants coming into the system (Figure 1 (d)), from this point on,
new ants will prefer the lower path, since at the decision point they perceive a greater amount
of pheromone on this lower path. In turn, this increases the positive feedback and the
numbers of ants are choosing the lower and shorter path. Very soon all ants will use the

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shorter path. This process is thus characterized by a positive feedback loop, where the
probability with which an ant chooses a path increases with the number of ants that
previously chose the same path. This behavior inspired the ACO algorithm in which a set of
artificial ants cooperate in the solution of a problem by exchanging information via
pheromone deposited on graph edges. The ACO algorithm is developed using artificial ants,
which are designed based on the behavior of real ants. The artificial ants walk through this
graph, looking for food paths; each ant has a rather simple behavior so that it will typically
only find rather poor-quality paths on its own. Better paths are found as the emergent result
of the global cooperation among ants in the colony. The behavior of artificial ants is inspired
from real ants. They lay pheromone trails on the graph edges and chooses their path with
respect to probabilities that depend on pheromone trails and this pheromone trails
progressively decrease by evaporation. Ants prefer to move to nodes, which are connected by
short edges with a high mount of pheromone. In addition, artificial ants have some extra
features that do not find in their counterpart, real ants. In particular, they live in a discrete
world, and their moves consist of transitions from nodes to nodes. Furthermore, they are
usually associated with data structures that contain the memory of their previous action.
Finally, the probability for an artificial ant to choose an edge often depends not only on
pheromone, but also on some problem specific local heuristics.

4) DEFINITION OF PROBLEM:
The primary aim of the controller is to maintain the frequency and voltage at an optimal level
under varying operating conditions. The transient response of LFC and AVR is very
important, because both the amplitude and time duration of the response must be within the
prescribed limits. The performance of two area system ACO tuned PID controllers and
convention PID is attracting the researchers to analyze their performance for its validity and
application worthiness.

5) PROPOSED WORK:
Considering literature review the proposed system will be developed to have better
adaptability towards changes in load than the conventional PID, Fuzzy, and Genetic
Algorithm based controllers, thereby providing improved performance with respect to
overshoot, settling time and oscillations. To complete the proposed system the following
objectives are defined:

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1) To review various Optimization algorithms for power system control.

2)To develop Conventional PID Controller for AVR system.
3)To Develop PID Controller using ACO for AVR.
4)To study improved performance with respect to overshoot, settling time and
oscillations.
5)To develop simulink model in matlab and to develop hardware for Validation of results.

6) METHODOLOGY:

Figure 2: Block Diagram of proposed system with ACO algorithm (EA)

The gains of PID controller Kp, Ki and Kd shown in figure 2 are proportional, integral and
derivative gains respectively are tuned by EA. In the proposed system ACO algorithms are
used to optimize ‘u’ from EA-PID is based on the error signal ‘e’, which is the difference
between actual output ‘y’ and the desired output ‘yd’. A set of optimal PID parameters can
yield good frequence set of PID parameters in the system to achieve desired output ‘yd’. The
control output cy and voltage characteristics of LFC and AVR. EA is considered as a useful
and promising technique for deriving the global optimum solution of complex functions.
Hence, application of these algorithms yields improved performance characteristics
in terms of settling time, oscillations and frequency. The LFC/AVR is subjected to different
operating characteristics like, varying load and regulation parameters to verify the validity of
the proposed algorithm. Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is applied to tune the controller
gains to ensure optimal performance at nominal operating conditions. ACO are used in

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offline to tune the gain parameters and applied to PID controller in the secondary control loop
of the plant.

Fig 3.Flow chart of ACO algorithm

Step 1: Initialization
In this step, it is needed to insert the lower and upper boundaries of each control variable,
system parameters, and create a search space with a dimensions of number of control
variables and the length of randomly distributed values with the same dimension of the initial
pheromone that contains elements with very small equal values to give all ants with the same
chance of searching.

Step 2: Provide first position

In the second step, each ant is positioned on the initial state randomly within the reasonable
range of each control variable in a search space with one ant in each control variable in the
length of randomly distributed values.

Step 3: Transition rule

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Each ant decides to visit a next position in the range of other control variables according to
the probability transition rule that depends on the amount of pheromone deposited and the
visibility.
Step 4: Local pheromone updating
Local updating pheromone is different from ant to other because each ant takes a different
route. The initial pheromone of each ant is locally updated.

Step 5: Fitness function

After all ants are attracted to the shortest path that has a strongest pheromone, the best
solution of the objective function is obtained.

Step 6: Global pheromone updating

Amount of pheromone on the best tour becomes the strongest due to attraction of ants to this
path. Moreover, the pheromone on the other paths is evaporated in time.

Step 7: Program termination

The program will be terminated when the maximum iteration is reached or the best solution is
obtained without the ants stagnations.

7) REFERENCES:

1. Surya Prakash , S.K. Sinha “Load frequency control of three area interconnected
hydro-thermal reheat power system using artificial intelligence and PI controllers”
International Journal of Engineering, Science and Technology Vol. 4, No. 1, 2011,
pp. 23-37

2. Mohd. RozelyKalil, Ismail Musirin “Ant Colony Optimization for Maximum

Loadability Search in Voltage Control StudyFirst International Power and
Energy CoferencePECon 2006 240November 28-29, 2006, Putrajaya, Malaysia

3. Hamid Boubertakh, Mohamed Tadjine, Pierre-Yves Glorennec and SalimLabiod

“Tuning Fuzzy PID Controllers using Ant Colony Optimization” 17th Mediterranean
Conference on Control & Automation Makedonia Palace, Thessaloniki, Greece June
24 - 26, 2009

4. Hwan Il Kang, Min Woo Kwon, Hwan Gil Bae “PID Coefficient Designs for the
Automatic Voltage Regulator Using a New Third Order Particle Swarm
Optimization”2010 International Conference on Electronics and Information
Engineering (ICEIE 2010)

5. Nazli Madinehi, Kiarash Shaloudegi, MehrdadAbedi, Hossein Askarian Abyaneh

“Optimum Design of PID Controller in AVR System Using Intelligent Methods”
Paper accepted for presentation at the 2011 IEEE Trondheim PowerTech

6. Hany M. Hasanien,”Design Optimization of PID Controller in Automatic Voltage

Regulator System Using Taguchi Combined Genetic Algorithm Method” IEEE
SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL. 7, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2013

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SYSTEM”.

7. Narendra Kumar Yegireddy and Sidhartha Panda “Design and Performance analysis
of PID controller for an AVR system using multi-objective non-dominated shorting
genetic algorithm II”

8. Haluk GOZDE, M.Cengiz TAPLAMACIOĞLU, Murat ARI “Automatic Voltage

Regulator (AVR) Design with Chaotic Particle Swarm Optimization”ECAI 2014 -
International Conference – 6th Edition Electronics, Computers and Artificial
Intelligence 23 October -25 October, 2014, Bucharest, ROMÂNIA

9. S. Dadvandipour, N. KhaliliDizaji, S. RosshanEntezar “An Approach to Optimize

the ProportionalIntegral- Derivative Controller System”

10. S. Bououdena, M. Chadlib, H.R. Karimic” “An ant colony optimization-based fuzzy
predictive control approach for nonlinear processes”Information Sciences 299 (2015)
143–158

11. Haluk Gozde, M.Cengiz Taplamacioglu “Comparative performance analysis of

artificial bee colony algorithm for automatic voltage regulator (AVR) system”
Journal of the Franklin Institute 348 (2011) 1927–1946

12. Aytekin Bagis “Tabu search algorithm based PID controller tuning for desired
system specifications” Journal of the Franklin Institute 348 (2011) 2795–2812

13. S. Panda, B.K. Sahu, P.K. Mohanty “Design and performance analysis of PID
controller for an automatic voltage regulator system using simplified particle swarm
optimization” Journal of the Franklin Institute 349 (2012) 2609–2625

14. Majid Zamani, Masoud Karimi-Ghartemani, Nasser Sadati, Mostafa Parniani

“Design of a fractional order PID controller for an AVR using particle swarm
optimization”

15. Yinggan Tang, Mingyong Cui, Changchun Hua, Lixiang Li, Yixian Yang “Optimum
design of fractional order PID controller for AVR system using chaotic ant swarm”

16. Aruchamy Sakthivel, P. Vijayakumar, A. Senthilkumar, L. Lakshminarasimman, S.

Paramasivam “Experimental investigations on Ant Colony Optimized PI control
algorithm for Shunt Active Power Filter to improve Power Quality”

17. ZHANG Dong-Li, TANG Ying-Gan, GUAN Xin-Ping “Optimum Design of

Fractional Order PID Controller for an AVR System Using an Improved Artificial
Bee Colony Algorithm”

18. Mouayad A. Sahib, “A novel optimal PID plus second order derivative controller for
AVR system” Engineering Science and Technology,an International Journal

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“PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF ACO BASED PID CONTROLLER IN AVR
SYSTEM”.

19. Surya Prakash, S.K. Sinha “Load frequency control of three area interconnected
hydro thermal reheat power system using artificial intelligence and PI controllers”
International Journal of Engineering, Science and Technology Vol. 4, No. 1, 2011,
pp. 23-37

20. Alireza Abbasy,Seyed Hamid Hosseini “Ant Colony Optimization-Based

Approach to Optimal Reactive Power Dispatch: A Comparison of Various Ant
Systems” IEEE PES Power Africa 2007 - Conference and Exhibition Johannesburg,
South Africa, 16-20 July 2007

21. Hany M. Hasanien, IEEE Design Optimization of PID Controller in Automatic

Voltage Regulator System using Taguchi Combined Genetic Algorithm Method”
IEEE SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL. 7, NO. 4, DECEMBER

22. A. A. Abou El-Ela · A. M. Kinawy · R. A. El-Sehiemy · M. T. Mouwafi “Optimal

reactive power dispatch using ant colony optimization algorithm” Elect. Engg
(2011) 93:103–116 DOI 10.1007/s00202-011-0196-4

23. Vivek Kumar Bhatt1, Dr. Sandeep Bhongade “Design Of PID Controller In
Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR) System Using PSO Technique” Vivek Kumar
Bhatt, Dr. Sandeep Bhongade / International Journal of Engineering Research and
Applications (IJERA) ISSN: 2248-9622 Vol. 3, Issue 4, Jul-Aug 2013, pp.1480-1485

24. A. A. Abou El-Ela, A. M. Kinawy and M. T. Mouwafi, R. A. El Sehiemy “Optimal

Reactive Power Dispatch Using Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm” Proceedings
of the 14th International Middle East Power Systems Conference (MEPCON’10),
Cairo University, Egypt, December 19-21, 2010, Paper ID 315.

25. Shyh-Jier Huang “Enhancement of Hydroelectric Generation Scheduling Using Ant

Colony System Based Optimization Approaches” IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
ENERGY CONVERSION, VOL. 16, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2001

26. Ying-Tung Hsiao, Cheng-Long Chuang and Cheng-Chih Chien “Ant Colony
Optimization for Designing of PID Controllers” 2004 IEEE international Symposium
on Computer Aided Control Systems Design Taipei, Taiwan, September 24,2004

27. Hamid Boubertakh, Mohamed Tadjine, Pierre-Yves Glorennec and Salim Labiod
“Tuning Fuzzy PID Controllers using Ant Colony Optimization” 17th Mediterranean
Conference on Control & Automation Makedonia Palace, Thessaloniki, Greece June
24 - 26, 2009

28. Yibao Chen, Zhong Guo, Jiaguang Liu “An Improved Ant Colony Algorithm for
PID Parameters Optimization” 2009 Second International Conference on Intelligent
Computation Technology and Automation

29. Yan Zhao, Zhongjun Xiao, Jiayu Kang “Optimization Design Based on Improved
Ant Colony Algorithm for PID Parameters of BP Neural Network” 2010 2nd
International Asia Conference on Informatics in Control, Automa

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30. Yoshida et al “PSO for reactive power and voltage control considering voltage
stability”

31. Ying-Tung Hsiao “An optimum approach for designing of PID controllers using
ACO”

32. DuanHai-bin “A novel parameter optimization strategy for PID controller using
ACO Algorithm Shyh-Jier”

33. Huang “ACO based optimization approach for enhancing hydroelectric generation
scheduling”.

34. Boubertakh et al “ACO for tuning PID controllers and illustrated the efficiency of
the proposed method by simulation examples”

35. Hong He et al “Designed ACO based PID parameter optimization to increase the
search speed for PID parameter optimization”.

36. Girirajkumar “The application of ACO algorithm to optimize the PID parameters in
the design of PID controller”.

To best of my knowledge above submitted information is true and correct.

Date: Place:

Mr. Prasad Jaysing Yadav

(Student Signature)

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