Generalised predictive control applied to a turbogenerator voltage regulator

The automatic voltage regulator (AVR) is an integral part of the turbo-generator´s excitation control system. It controls the generator terminal voltage whilst ensuring proper sharing of the reactive power amongst parallel connected generators. Consequently the AVR must be designed to operate under various load and fault conditions. These dynamic changes can degrade the performance of generator excitation systems when conventional fixed-gain linear voltage regulators are used. The use of a self-tuning strategy for voltage regulation is shown to handle this problem well. The development of such a controller using microprocessor hardware is described, using an algorithm based on the generalised predictive control (GPC) strategy. Using a comprehensive simulator, it is shown that the system performance under fault condition is satisfactory. Finally, the performance of the controller is evaluated by implementation on a laboratory model turbo-generator