Model reference PID control and tuning for steam temperature in thermal power plant

This paper presents practical model reference controller and tuning method to improve steam temperature control performance which is the one of most challenging parts in coal fired power plant. PID controller is a widely used for this control problem due to its easy implementation and good performance. However tuning PID parameter in initial stage is a hard task. In addition, system nonlinearity and long time lag and dead time make control difficult to guarantee good performance for the wide range of load condition. This paper describes the characteristics of existing steam temperature control scheme and superheater and spray system, and introduces improved control scheme by applying simple superheater model via simple parameter identification method. Simulation results will validates that introducing scheme is very easy to implement but shows good performance.