PSO based fractional order automatic generation controller for a three area interconnected system

The widely used integer-order proportionalintegral controller and proportional - integral - derivative controller are usually adopted in automatic generation control (AGC) to improve the dynamic response and to eliminate steady state errors. However in the recent past, fractional calculus has received extensive attention and research. Accordingly, there is an increasing interest in fractional-order dynamic systems and controller. This paper presents the development and application of Fractional order PID controllers based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) for load frequency control of a three-area interconnected system. The performance of the proposed controller is compared with PSO based traditional PID controllers for a 1% step load perturbations in one of the areas. Comparative analysis demonstrates that proposed FOPID controller based on PSO reduces the settling time and overshoot effectively, against small step load disturbances. Simulations have been performed using MATLAB/Simulink.