Performance investigation of ABC algorithm in multi-area power system with multiple interconnected generators

This paper presents an extensive study on the application of Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm for load frequency control (LFC) in multi-area power system with multiple interconnected generators. The LFC model incorporates various possible physical constraints and non-linearities such as generation rate constraint, time delay, dead zone and boiler. The ABC algorithm is used to find the optimum PID controller parameters. The tuning performance of the algorithm is comparatively investigated against different optimization technique such as evolutionary programming (EP), genetic algorithm (GA), gravitational search algorithm (GSA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). The robustness analysis of the system is also evaluated by investigating the dynamic response of the controller with load demand at varying time step, tuning based on different performance criterion and by varying the load demand. The performance of the system is evaluated based on the settling time and maximum overshoot value of the frequency deviation response. The performance of ABC is also verified against an exhaustive search based on interval halving method. Despite employing a single controller for multiple interconnected generators, the optimized controller is able to successfully damp oscillations in the system response and regulate the area control error back to zero in minimal amount of time. The results indicate the superiority of the ABC algorithm's search mechanism in finding the optimum set of PID controller's gain.