Experimental evaluation of optimal tuning for PID parameters in an AVR system

Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR) is employed to stabilize the output voltage of the generators in the electric power plants. However, reliable performance of AVR depends on professional tuning of its PID controller’s parameters. Therefore, different optimization algorithms are used to determine those parameters. The objective of the optimization is defined as minimizing the characteristics of transient step response such as settling time, rise time, overshoot, and steady state error. Then, to verify the optimization results, a simulator is built experimentally for AVR and PID system that can also be used for other studies on AVR systems. The experimental results are compared with those of MATLAB and Pspice Software. Close agreement between the simulation and experimental results confirms the success of the optimization.