Design of an optimal robust governor for hydraulic turbine generating units

Design and analysis of a hydraulic turbine generator governor using optimal robust control methodology are presented. The approach is unique in the sense that the nonlinear characteristics of the turbine are first modelled as multiplicative uncertainties; and an optimal robust governor is designed by taking into account such uncertainties explicitly. The advantage of this approach is that the designed governor will guarantee the stability and the performance of the speed control loop for the entire turbine operating range. The performance of the new governor is shown to be superior to that of the conventional PID controller during large load disturbances. The resulting governor is only a third order. Hence, it has the same level of complexity as any other electrical-hydraulic governor in use today