Electric Power Systems Research 176 (2019) 105938

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Electric Power Systems Research

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/epsr

Salp swarm algorithm-based optimal load frequency control of hybrid T

renewable power systems with communication delay and excitation cross-
coupling effect
Hany M. Hasaniena, Attia A. El-Ferganyb,
⁎

a
Ain Shams University, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Electric Power and Machines, Cairo, Egypt
b
Zagazig University, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Electric Power and Machines, P.O. Box 44519, Zagazig, Egypt

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: This paper proposes a new application of the salp swarm algorithm (SSA) to fine-tune the gains of proportional-
Load frequency control integral-derivative (PID) controllers of load frequency control (LFC) of a multi-area hybrid renewable nonlinear
Optimization methods power system. To analyze the system nonlinearity, a dead-band is implemented in the governor model, a gen-
Power system control and dynamics eration rate constraint is employed with the turbine model, and a communication delay time of phase measuring
Renewable energy sources
unit devices is carried out in the secondary automatic LFC loop. An exact model is established to take into
consideration the effect of cross-coupling between the excitation control system and LFC loop. A single and
multi-objective functions are performed to test the validity of the proposed controllers. To obtain a more realistic
study, real wind speed data are involved in the wind farm model and real sun irradiations for a photovoltaic
system that captured from a field test are incorporated to check the validity of the SSA-PID controllers under
power system nonlinearities and renewable energy sources variability and uncertainties. The effectiveness of
SSA-PID controller is compared with other optimization methods based-PID controller under several operating
conditions. With the proposed controller, the LFC dynamic responses of multi-area hybrid nonlinear power
systems shall be further enhanced.

1. Introduction problem of interconnected power systems. In this issue, many artificial

In Today’s world, the capacity of electric utilities increases and also
the number of their interconnections increases, which results in a
complex power system. These power systems are subdivided into a set
of control areas that interconnected among others via tie-lines. The
rated power capacity of such areas is based on their synchronous gen-
erator ratings [1]. The load frequency control (LFC) of these inter-
connected power systems plays a vital role to achieve a stable and sa-
tisfactory system performance when the system is subjected to any
disturbance that causes a frequency change [2–4]. An example of that
disturbance is step load perturbations (SLPs). The principal objectives
of the LFC are as follows: (i) Each control area helps in returning the
static frequency drop to zero after a disturbance takes place; and (ii)
Each area maintains the tie-line power within the specified range [5–7].
It is no doubt that the LFC affects the power system operation and
dynamic stability. Therefore, it should be extensively studied and in-
vestigated.
Several control strategies have been applied to solve the LFC
intelligence controllers like artificial neural network (ANN) [8], fuzzy
logic controller (FLC) [9,10], and adaptive neuro-fuzzy controllers are
implemented to achieve the target [11]. In general, these artificial in-
telligence controllers have some demerits, where ANN based on con-
trollers suffer from a long training period and a complex structure and
FLCs rely on the designer experience to select its memberships and
fuzzy rules. In addition, many robust controllers such as H∞ [12] and
sliding mode controllers are used for the LFC problem of interconnected
power systems [13,14]. However, these aforementioned controllers
have a few disadvantages such as its dependency on the designer ex-
perience, its long computational time, and its complex procedure. Till
this moment, the proportional plus integral (PI)/proportional plus in-
tegral plus derivative (PID) controllers are still the most commonly
implemented controllers in the industry. Actually, this is due to their
merits like simplicity, easy to be built and implemented, its low cost,
and its high margin of stability. However, some demerits inherent with
these controllers such as its sensitivity to parameters variation of the
dynamic system and also its nonlinearity. Therefore, fine-tune of such

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: el_fergany@ieee.org (A.A. El-Fergany).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2019.105938
Received 29 October 2018; Received in revised form 7 July 2019; Accepted 8 July 2019
0378-7796/ © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
H.M. Hasanien and A.A. El-Fergany
Fig. 1. Block diagram of a hybrid renewable multi-area nonlinear power system.
controller gains are not easy at all when dealing with nonlinear systems
such as power networks. To solve this controller design problem, con-
ventional optimization methods can be utilized, but several difficulties
shall be met due to the following reasons: (i) its dependency on the
initial conditions; (ii) its solution relies on the type of ordinary differ-
ential equation solver; and (iii) in nonlinear systems, multiple peaks
may be exist and it shall target a local minima. Unlike these conven-
tional methods, meta-heuristic optimization methods are presented to
solve these problems. In this regard, several meta-heuristic optimiza-
tion algorithms have been used to optimally fine tune PI or PID con-
trollers in nonlinear systems such as genetic algorithm (GA) [15],
particle swarm optimization (PSO) [16], harmony search algorithm
[17], cuckoo search algorithm [18], water cycle algorithm [19], grey
wolf optimization algorithm [20], and whale optimization algorithm
[21]. In a deep focus on the automatic generation control or LFC pro-
blem of interconnected power systems, GA [22], PSO [23], and other
meta-heuristic optimization algorithms like stochastic fractional opti-
mizer [24], teaching-learn algorithm [25], and symbiotic organisms
search [26] are used to solve the LFC problem. Recently, there is a
revolution of the computational evolutionary algorithms, which are
inspired by nature. Tremendous efforts have been exerted by the re-
searchers to develop them for solving many engineering optimization
problems. This represents the authors’ motivation to use the salp swarm
algorithm (SSA) to fine-tune PID controllers of a multi-area hybrid
nonlinear renewable interconnected power system.
The SSA is a novel meta-heuristic algorithm that is inspired by the
attitude of salps in nature. The salps like jelly fishes. The SSA demon-
strates a salp chain for searching their food. It was presented by S.
Mirjalili and others in 2017 [27]. The SSA have some merits like its
high speed to reach the optimal value and it possess a minimum number
of factors that need adjustment. Recently, it was implemented to solve
several engineering problems [27]. Furthermore, it is used to estimate
fuel cell parameters model [28] and solve the optimal power flow in
power networks [29].
Recently, the LFC problem have received much interest in power
systems to get a power balance between power generation and load
power. In Today's power system, a large number of phase measuring
units (PMUs) devices is employed. Several signals are transmitted from
transmission systems to dispatching/control centers and from these
2
Electric Power Systems Research 176 (2019) 105938
centers to generation stations causing a communication delay time
(CDT), which may affect the system stability [30,31]. In this study, this
communication delay is taken into account within the interconnected
power system model. On the other hand, most of the published research
works have ignored the cross-coupling effect between the LFC and ex-
citation control systems. In fact, the LFC has not any effect on the ex-
citation control system due to its lower response, but on contrast the
excitation control system affects the LFC dynamics momentary. Any
step perturbation of excitation voltage of any area can affect the area
power, frequency, and tie line power transiently. This cross-coupling
should be involved in the interconnected power system model and it
should be studied and investigated under different operating condi-
tions. This is also one of the salient features of this study.
In this paper, the SSA-PID controller is proposed to optimally design
such controller of a LFC of a multi-area hybrid renewable nonlinear
power system. To analyze the system nonlinearity, the governor dead-
band (GDB) is implemented, the generation rate constraint (GRC) is
used within the turbine model, the CDT of PMU devices is carried out in
the secondary automatic LFC loop. An exact model is established to take
into consideration the effect of cross-coupling between the excitation
control system and LFC loop. A single and multi-objective functions are
performed to examine the validity of proposed controller. To obtain a
more realistic study, real wind speed data are involved in the wind farm
model and real power data of photovoltaic system that extracted from a
field test are incorporated to check the validity of the SSA-PID con-
troller under power system nonlinearities and renewable energy
sources (RESs) variability and uncertainties. The effectiveness of SSA-
PID controller is compared with other optimization methods based-PID
controller under several operating conditions. A comprehensive study is
based on simulation results that are carried out using the powerful
MATLAB program [32].
The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 introduces the system
model. In Section 3, the problem formulation and the SSA model are
presented. Section 4 presents the simulation results and discussion. In
Section 5, a conclusion is drawn.
2. System model
In this study, a two-area interconnected hybrid renewable nonlinear
H.M. Hasanien and A.A. El-Fergany Electric Power Systems Research 176 (2019) 105938

Table 1 the tie line power change within the system model. Additionally, loads
Transfer functions of the system components. are added to both control areas by an amount of | D1
P
|V1| and
V | 1
PD2
Component Transfer function |V2|, respectively. In this study, a renewable energy system that is
| V2 |
represented as a wind farm and a photovoltaic (PV) power plant is
Governor 1/(Tg s + 1)
Turbine
incorporated into the power system to extensively study the system
1/(Tt s + 1)
Reheat (kh Th s + 1)/(Th s + 1) nonlinearity and uncertainty. These models can be implemented as
Power System kp/(Tp s + 1) follows:

2.1. Wind farm

power system is presented, as demonstrated in Fig. 1. The main data of
each area include a rated power capacity of 2000 MW, a rated load The power captured from wind Pm can be mathematically expressed
demand of 1000 MW, the nominal frequency is 50 Hz, and the system in as follows [35]:
base power is 2000 MVA. Further details of the system data are men-
Pm = 0.5 r 2Vw3 Cp ( , ) (6)
tioned in [3]. The two-area system is based on thermal power plants
including their control loops. In each control area, the principal com- where equals air density, r represents blade radius, Vw represents wind
ponents such as governor, turbine, reheater, and power system are speed, equals tip speed ratio, is blade pitch angle, and the power
expressed mathematically by first order transfer functions, as illustrated coefficient Cp is given by the following equation [36]:
in Table 1.
BR 3600 R
Fig. 1 demonstrates the complete model of the system under study. = , i =
VW 1609
Parameter R represents speed regulation or droop due to governor ac-
tion and it contributes to feedback of the primary LFC loop. Moreover, Cp = 0.5 ( i 0.022 2 5.6) e 0.17 i
(7)
B is area frequency bias parameter, which helps in completing feedback
of the secondary LFC loop to generate the error signal that feeds the PID where B equals blade speed.
controller, as illustrated in Fig. 1. Tg , Tt , Th , and Tp are time constants of A wind farm of rated capacity of 85 MW, which is located at
the governor, turbine, reheater, and power system, respectively. kh and Zafarana, Egypt, is joined the system with all its real data, as indicated
kp are the gains of reheater and power system. T12 represents the syn- in Fig. 1. The wind induction generator is mathematically modeled by a
chronization time between the two control area. transfer function of a unity gain and 0.3 s time constant. The pitch
To keep the power system with its nonlinearity, the GDB is im- controller is used to obtain MPPT conditions.
plemented. This deadband reveals a signal band interval that no action
is required from the governor. An intentional GDB or deadzone with a 2.2. PV system
band of 0.0006 p.u is chosen based on the AIEE-ASME standards [33].
Moreover, the GRC of 5% per minute is employed with the turbine A single-diode PV model is mathematically modeled in this study to
model to indicate the rate of change of turbine power and its limita- model PV modules. This is because of its accuracy and simplicity. The
tions. In addition, the CDT of PMUs devices is carried out in the sec- nonlinear I–V characteristic of the PV module is written as follows
ondary ALFC loop. This delay time is mathematically modeled by an [37,38]:
exponential decay function with a time constant of 1 s. These non-
V + Rs I V + Rs I
linearity elements degrade the LFC system performance and may cause I = IPV Io exp 1
system instability. Also, F and Ptie represent the frequency and tie a Vt Rp (8)
line power change. Furthermore, an exact model is developed to in- where IPV is the photovoltaic current, Io , a are the reverse bias current
dicate the cross-coupling effect between the LFC system and excitation and ideality factor of the diode, Rs and Rp are the series and parallel
control system. The tie line power transmitted from area-1 to area-2 can resistances, and Vt is the thermal voltage. A KC200GT solar PV module
be formulated as follows: is selected and its data are appeared in Ref. [39].
|V1 ||V2 | The PV power plant data are involved in Ref. [37]. The series-par-
Ptie = sin ( 2)
X12
1
(1) allel connection scheme is applied to create a large scale PV system of
50 MW in this study. To obtain a realistic study, real data of this PV
where, |V1|, |V2| are voltage magnitude of both areas, X12 is the tie line
power plant that captured practically are incorporated to the system
reactance, and 1, 2 are power angle of such areas, respectively. In
model. The power electronic interface circuits include a DC–DC con-
several published research works, Ptie is assumed to be come from 1
verter and a grid-side inverter. These interfaced circuits are modeled by
and 2 only with an assumption of constant voltage magnitude [34].
transfer functions of a unity gain and 10 ms time constant. The pro-
To produce an exact model for Ptie , |V1 | and |V2| should be taken
posed hybrid renewable interconnected power system is completely
into consideration as follows:
modeled using MATLAB/SIMULINK program.
Ptie Ptie Ptie
Ptie = |V1| + |V2| + ( 1 2)
|V1 | |V2 | ( 1 2) (2) 3. Problem formulation and the SSA code
After performing these partial differentiation terms, it can be
3.1. Problem formulation
written in the following expression [34]:
Ptie = T1 |V1| + T2 |V2| + T12 ( 1 2) (3) In this study, the most commonly used PID controller is applied to
the LFC loop of the power system. Its design variables are proportional
where the coefficients T1 and T2 are expressed as follows:
gain kP , integral gain ki , derivative gain kd , and derivative filter coef-
|V20 | 0 0 ficient N. Its transfer function is formulated as follows:
T1 = sin ( 1 2)
X12 (4) 1 N
IGc (s ) = kP + ki. + k d. 1
|V10 | s 1 + N. (9)
0 0 s
T2 = sin ( 1 2)
X12 (5)
In the design of LFC system, selection of an objective function is one
These exciter voltage perturbations of both areas should be added to of the key points for possible improvement of power system dynamic

3
H.M. Hasanien and A.A. El-Fergany Electric Power Systems Research 176 (2019) 105938

responses. In a common practice, four types of integral criterions

namely Integral Squared Error (ISE), Integral Absolute Error (IAE),
Integral Time-weighted Squared Error (ITSE) and Integral Time-
weighted Absolute Error (ITAE), are utilized in defining the objective
function [40]. The ISE criterion exhibits a minimum overshoot but in-
creases the settling time. This overshoot represents a distance between
the maximum response and the final value of response when a dis-
turbance takes place. The settling time is the time taken by the response
to reach 98% of its final value after a disturbance happens. IAE is used
where digital simulation of a system is employed. Alternatively, both
ITSE and ITAE has additional time multiplies with the error function,
which makes the system is fast compared with ISE and IAE. The ITSE
criterion based controller offers a large controller output for a sudden
change in the desired input. The ITAE performance index has ad-
vantages of producing smaller overshoots and oscillations than the IAE
or ISE performance indices [41]. It is well-known that due to non-
linearity and time varying nature of power system networks, system
parameters are continuously changing with respect to time. On other
words, ITAE tuning produces systems which settle much more quickly
than other tuning procedures. Therefore, these different objective
functions are employed in this study as a single or multi-objective
function. They can be modeled by the following equations:
ts
ISE = ( F12 + F22 + Ptie
2
).dt
0 (10)
ts
ITSE = t . ( F12 + F22 + Ptie
2
).dt
0 (11)
ts
IAE = (| F1| + | F2| + | Ptie|). dt
0 (12)
ts
ITAE = t . (| F1| + | F2| + | Ptie|). dt
0 (13)

Subject to limits of PID gains as follows:

K pm, i, d min K pm, i, d K pm, i, d max m NPID (14)
Fig. 2. Procedure of the SSA.
Nm
min Nm m
Nmax m NPID (15)

where ts is the simulation time; K pm, i, d min and K pm, i, d max are the lower
and higher bounds of proportional/integral/derivative gains of the mth
PID controller, respectively; N m min and Nmax are the lower and higher
m

limits of filter coefficients of the m PID controller, respectively; and

th

NPID is the number of PID controllers.

The SSA is used to minimize the targeted function to yield the op-
timal values of the controller parameter under several operating con-
ditions of the power system.

3.2. The SSA code

The salp chains or the random population is categorized into: (i)

leader at the front, and (ii) subsequent followers. The salps position is
assigned in an n-dimensional field, where n represents the number of Fig. 3. Fitness value convergence.
design variables. Thus, the position of all salps including leading one
are stored in a 2-dimensional matrix named X . The position of the 1 i
X ij = (X j + X ij 1 ) 2 i Max _Iter
leader ( X1j ) is updated by using the formula specified in Eq. (16). On the 2 (19)
other hand, the positions of the rest of salps/followers are updated by
using Eq. (19) [27,28]. where Fj represents the position of the food source in the jth dimension,
HLj and LLj indicates the higher and lower limits of jth dimension, C2 ,
Fj + C1 ((HLj LLj ) C2 + LLj ) C3 < 0.5 and C3 are random uniform distributed numbers, k is the iteration
X1j =
Fj C1 ((HLj LLj ) C2 + LLj ) C3 0.5 (16) counter and Max _Iter defines the maximum number of iterations.
The factor C1 is important to guarantee the balance between ex-
C1 = 2. exp ( (4k /Max _Iter )2) (17) ploration and exploitation process and it is computed adaptively ac-
cording to the iteration numbers, as indicated in Eq. (17). There are
C2 = rand (…) and C3 = rand (…) (18) three parameters for this algorithm, namely number of agents/salps,

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H.M. Hasanien and A.A. El-Fergany Electric Power Systems Research 176 (2019) 105938

Table 2 Table 3
Optimal values of proposed controller gains. Transient response specifications of system responses.
PID kp ki kd N Algorithm Response MUS MOS Ts (s)

1 9.75 9.58 9.41 95.2 SSA F1 (Hz) 3.39e-3 6.61e-4 6.38

2 9.75 9.58 9.41 95.2 ABC [42] 5.44e-3 34.2e-4 12.43
GA [15] 5.36e-3 12.53e-4 7.89

SSA F2 (Hz) 7.89e-4 1.62e-4 13.05

Max_Iter and the Archive size. The flow-chart shown in Fig. 2 depicts ABC [42] 22.18e-4 15.47e-4 16.10
the overall procedures of the SSA. In case of multiple objectives, Pareto GA [15] 19.68e-4 4.13e-4 14.79

set of the non-dominated solutions are stored in the archive, which is
always updated iteratively to get rid of the solutions with crowded
neighborhood. In addition, the stored solutions are ranked and updated
and then selected by using a roulette wheel method. At final step, the
best compromise solution is picked up carefully. More details about the
SSA can be found in Ref. [27]. The SSA code is implemented in MA-
TLAB environment.
4. Simulation results and discussion
An exact model of an interconnected two-area hybrid renewable
power system taken into consideration all its nonlinearities and the
cross-coupling effect between the excitation control system and the LFC
system is presented in details using MATLAB/SIMULINK program. The
SSA code is interfaced with such detailed model to carry out the opti-
mization process. The system performance is assessed under different
operating conditions during the following scenarios:
4.1. Scenario 1. Performance assessment of the interconnected power
system without nonlinearities
This scenario introduces an optimal procedure to fine tune PID
controllers of the system under study using the SSA. In this scenario, all
the system nonlinearities such as GDB, GRC, CDT, cross-coupling of
excitation control effect and any incorporated RESs are deactivated.
The main reason for these components deactivation is to test the ef-
fectiveness of the proposed controller during a fair comparison with
other heuristic-based optimal PID controllers. To check the power
system dynamic responses, an SLP of +1% p.u is applied to area-1 at
time t = 0 s, as a network disturbance. The lower and upper limits of
controller parameters are indicated in Ref. [42]. The ISE criterion is
chosen as a single objective function. It is found that optimal settings of
SSA Ptie (p.u) 3.21e-4 6.32e-5 13.24
ABC [42] 6.61e-4 32.8e-5 17.90
GA [15] 7.49e-4 11.55e-5 15.28
the SSA include 10 search agents and 50 iterations. This optimization
process is repeated more than 30 times to test the algorithm robustness
and it yields 0.761e-5 as a minimum fitness value. Hence, the statistical
procedure like standard deviation and variance are computed and these
are approximately close to zero. The fitness value convergence is de-
monstrated in Fig. 3. Notably, the convergence has a smooth nature to
reach the best fitness value. Table 2 lists the optimal gains of these
controllers using the SSA. It can be realized that the PID controller
values are identical because two areas are equal. The power system
responses such as F1, F2 , and Ptie are pointed out in Fig. 4(a)–(c).
Notably, the dynamic responses with the proposed SSA-PID controller
are faster and better damped of fluctuations than that achieved by ar-
tificial bee colony (ABC)-PID controller [42] and GA-PID controller,
whose GA settings are written in details in Ref. [15]. These optimiza-
tion algorithms are applied to the same system for a fair comparison.
Different transient response specifications such as maximum under-
shoot (MUS), maximum overshoot (MOS), and settling time (Ts )
of ± 0.002% criterion are recorded in Table 3. It can be realized that all
these specifications using the SSA are rigorously smaller than that ob-
tained by other heuristic optimization techniques leading to a high
superiority of the proposed algorithm. There are several reasons for
superiority of the SSA to other algorithms such as: (i) Its high velocity to
converge, (ii) It possesses a lower number of parameters that need to be
fine-tuned, (iii) Its simple mathematical procedure, and (iv) Its proper
design by the designer. Therefore, it can be applied to the inter-
connected power system with its nonlinearities.
A further investigation to check the validity of the generated

Fig. 4. System responses for scenario 1. (a) F1. (b) F2 . (c) Ptie .

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H.M. Hasanien and A.A. El-Fergany Electric Power Systems Research 176 (2019) 105938

Table 4
Numerical simulations under system parametric variations and sensitivity.
Change% in parameter +25% −25%

Parameter Signal deviation TS (s) MOS MUS TS (s) MOS MUS

Tg1 F1 (Hz) 6.44 6.71e-04 −3.87e-03 6.58 6.69e-04 −3.19e-03

F2 (Hz) 14.03 1.79e-04 −8.41e-04 14.07 1.78e-04 −8.39e-04
Ptie (p. u) 14.28 6.31e-05 −3.39e-04 14.32 6.30e-05 −3.38e-04
Tg2 F1 (Hz) 6.51 6.71e-04 −3.55e-03 6.51 6.69e-04 −3.55e-03
F2 (Hz) 14.05 1.78e-04 −8.40e-04 14.05 1.79e-04 −8.40e-04
Ptie (p. u) 14.30 6.30e-05 −3.38e-04 14.30 6.30e-05 −3.39e-04
Tt1 F1 (Hz) 6.36 6.87e-04 −3.94e-03 6.66 6.57e-04 −3.11e-03
F2 (Hz) 13.93 1.82e-04 −8.59e-04 14.16 1.76e-04 −8.26e-04
Ptie (p. u) 14.17 6.42e-05 −3.46e-04 14.41 6.22e-05 −3.33e-04
Tt2 F1 (Hz) 6.50 6.71e-04 −3.55e-03 6.51 6.68e-04 −3.55e-03
F2 (Hz) 14.03 1.76e-04 −8.42e-04 14.07 1.81e-04 −8.39e-04
Ptie (p. u) 14.31 6.29e-05 −3.38e-04 14.30 6.32e-05 −3.39e-04
Th1 F1 (Hz) 6.63 8.76e-04 −3.97e-03 6.34 4.63e-04 −3.08e-03
F2 (Hz) 14.64 2.51e-04 −1.03e-03 12.54 1.05e-04 −6.53e-04
Ptie (p. u) 14.93 9.04e-05 −4.14e-04 12.71 3.55e-05 −2.63e-04
Th2 F1 (Hz) 6.56 6.68e-04 −3.55e-03 6.46 6.71e-04 −3.55e-03
F2 (Hz) 14.00 1.88e-04 −8.55e-04 14.10 1.71e-04 −8.25e-04
Ptie (p. u) 14.36 6.01e-05 −3.37e-04 14.24 6.60e-05 −3.40e-04
R1 F1 (Hz) 6.58 6.50e-04 −3.55e-03 6.44 6.90e-04 −3.55e-03
F2 (Hz) 14.07 1.73e-04 −8.33e-04 14.03 1.84e-04 −8.49e-04
Ptie (p. u) 14.33 6.14e-05 −3.35e-04 14.27 6.48e-05 −3.42e-04
R2 F1 (Hz) 6.48 6.72e-04 −3.55e-03 6.54 6.68e-04 −3.55e-03
F2 (Hz) 14.08 1.73e-04 −8.33e-04 14.02 1.84e-04 −8.49e-04
Ptie (p. u) 14.3 6.44e-05 −3.39e-04 14.31 6.16e-05 −3.37e-04
B1 F1 (Hz) 6.57 5.52e-04 −3.18e-03 6.40 8.45e-04 −4.11e-03
F2 (Hz) 14.26 1.44e-04 −7.16e-04 13.77 2.30e-04 −1.02e-03
Ptie (p. u) 14.54 5.07e-05 −2.88e-04 13.97 8.15e-05 −4.09e-04
B2 F1 (Hz) 6.47 7.21e-04 −3.55e-03 6.60 6.07e-04 −3.55e-03
F2 (Hz) 14.26 1.44e-04 −7.16e-04 13.76 2.30e-04 −1.02e-03
Ptie (p. u) 14.57 6.24e-05 −3.58e-04 13.92 6.30e-05 −3.11e-04
Kp1 F1 (Hz) 6.46 6.61e-04 −3.96e-03 6.55 6.85e-04 −3.09e-03
F2 (Hz) 14.05 1.75e-04 −8.38e-04 14.07 1.84e-04 −8.45e-04
Ptie (p. u) 14.30 6.18e-05 −3.37e-04 14.30 6.51e-05 −3.40e-04
Kp2 F1 (Hz) 6.50 6.72e-04 −3.55e-03 6.52 6.66e-04 −3.55e-03
F2 (Hz) 14.05 1.75e-04 −8.38e-04 14.06 1.84e-04 −8.45e-04
Ptie (p. u) 14.31 6.32e-05 −3.38e-04 14.29 6.27e-05 −3.39e-04
Tp1 F1 (Hz) 6.54 6.82e-04 −3.18e-03 6.45 6.58e-04 −4.09e-03
F2 (Hz) 14.06 1.83e-04 −8.44e-04 14.05 1.74e-04 −8.37e-04
Ptie (p. u) 14.30 6.46e-05 −3.40e-04 14.30 6.15e-05 −3.37e-04
Tp2 F1 (Hz) 6.52 6.67e-04 −3.55e-03 6.50 6.73e-04 −3.55e-03
F2 (Hz) 14.06 1.83e-04 −8.44e-04 14.05 1.74e-04 −8.37e-04
Ptie (p. u) 14.29 6.27e-05 −3.39e-04 14.31 6.34e-05 −3.38e-04
T12 F1 (Hz) 6.43 6.01e-04 −3.54e-03 6.70 7.45e-04 −3.55e-03
F2 (Hz) 13.60 2.13e-04 −9.18e-04 14.71 1.29e-04 −7.35e-04
Ptie (p. u) 13.79 7.49e-05 −3.70e-04 15.02 4.57e-05 −2.96e-04

Table 5 variations. The reader can see obviously that the reported numerical
Optimal values of proposed controllers gains for scenario 2. results of time-domain dynamic responses indicate that the optimized
PID kp ki kd N
PID controllers are performed efficiently even under system parametric
variations. It can be said that the aforementioned analysis points out the
1 0.096 0.505 0.332 34.93 viability of the proposed SSA-PID controller of LFC under wide varia-
2 0.096 0.505 0.332 34.93 tion of system parameters and operating load conditions of the power
system.

optimal gains of PID controllers using the SSA, operating load condi-
tions of the power system and system parameters are varied by ± 25%
of their original values to perform the sensitivity analysis. These var-
iations include the value of time constants (area-1 and area-2) of gov-
ernor, turbine (i.e. Tg1,Tg 2, Tt1 and Tt 2 ), reheater (Th1 and Th2) and droops
and frequency biases (R1 & R2 and B1 & B2) . In addition, variations of
operating load conditions of the power system and synchronization
coefficient (i.e. Kp1, Kp2, Tp1, Tp2 and Tp12 are carried out. The records of
Table 4 specify the transient characteristics under system parametric
4.2. Scenario 2. Performance assessment of the interconnected power
system with nonlinearities
In this scenario, the performance of the proposed interconnected
two-area power system is evaluated subjecting to the system non-
linearities. In this regard, the GDB, GRC and CDT are applied to the
system under study and their settings are illustrated in Section 2.
Moreover, the cross-coupling effect of the excitation control system on

6
H.M. Hasanien and A.A. El-Fergany Electric Power Systems Research 176 (2019) 105938

Fig. 5. System responses for scenario 2. (a) F1-SVP. (b) F2 -SVP. (c) Ptie -SVP. (d) F1-SLP. (e) F2 -SLP. (f) Ptie -SLP.

Table 6 hardly the power system dynamic responses with all its nonlinearities,
Transient response specifications of system responses for scenario 2. an SVP of +1% p.u is applied to area-1 at time t = 0 s, as a network
Response MUS MOS Ts (s)
disturbance. The ISE criterion is chosen as a single objective function
through this scenario. The SSA is applied to the ISE function to yield the
F1 (Hz ) 7.07e-2 7.14e-3 9.58 optimal gains of PID controllers. It is found that optimal settings of the
F2 (Hz ) 3.41e-2 3.17e-2 9.72 SSA include 10 search agents and 50 iterations. The fitness value re-
6.64e-3 1.00e-2 7.43
Ptie (p. u) cords 0.00585. Table 5 indicates the optimal gains of these controllers
using the SSA. The power system responses such as F1, F2 , and Ptie
are demonstrated in Fig. 5(a)–(c). The transient response specifications
Table 7
are shown in Table 6. It can be noted that these dynamic responses have
Standard specifications of ENEC [43].
a faster action with minimum fluctuations. Moreover, to test the power
Quantity Value system with the optimal proposed controller whose gains are listed in
Table 5, a severe SVP of 5% is applied to area-1 at time t = 0 s. This
Standard frequency range ± 0.2 Hz
Maximum instantaneous frequency change ± 0.8 Hz disturbance is the maximum allowable voltage disturbance in electric
Maximum steady state frequency change ± 0.5 Hz power systems worldwide. Under these operating conditions, the
Recovery time on 50 Hz nominal frequency 1 min system dynamic responses are shown in Fig. 5(a)-(c). It is worthy for
noting here that the SSA-PID controller is capable of efficiently con-
trolling the power system and it has the ability to return the system
Table 8 back to its original state exhibiting a robust stability.
Optimal values of proposed Controllers gains for scenario 3. It can be realized that the frequency deviation and the tie line power
PID kp ki kd N change are lied in acceptable ranges, which rely on the European
Electricity Grid Codes (EEGC) [43]. The standard specifications of these
1 0.178 0.560 0.327 90.65 grid codes are demonstrated in Table 7. For further verification of the
2 0.178 0.560 0.327 90.65 proposed optimal controllers, several SLPs of 1% and 5% p.u amplitude
are also switched on such area at t = 0 s. Figs. 5(d)–(f) depict the fre-
quency deviation and the tie line power change. Notably, the optimal
the LFC system is taken into consideration to figure out a more realistic
SSA-PID controller is successfully implemented to the power system
nonlinear study. An exact model is proposed to take this effect into
under these operating conditions. This reflects the flexibility, robust-
consideration. The coefficients T1 and T2 and the terms PD1 and PD2
| V1 | | V2 | ness and high performance of the SSA-PID controller to deal with an
are selected as 1 p.u MW/p.u volt [34]. Based on Eqs. (2)–(5), any step interconnected power system with all nonlinearities, which appear in
excitation voltage perturbation (SVP) of an area affects a change in the GDB, GRC, CDT, and cross-coupling effect of the excitation control
tie line power and load demand of such control area. Therefore, to test systems.

7
H.M. Hasanien and A.A. El-Fergany Electric Power Systems Research 176 (2019) 105938

Fig. 6. System responses for scenario 3. (a) F . (b) Ptie .

Table 9 4.3. Scenario 3. Performance assessment of the system with nonlinearities

Transient response specifications of system responses for scenario 3. and different multi-objective optimizations
Response MUS MOS Ts (s)
The main goal of this scenario is to evaluate the system performance
F1 (Hz ) 6.46e-2 2.51e-2 21.87 with its nonlinearities and cross-coupling exciter effect under a multi-
F2 (Hz ) 4.56e-2 2.64e-2 24.10 objective optimization process. In this issue, the four objective func-
Ptie (p. u) 9.88e-3 1.00e-2 17.79
tions of ISE, ITSE, IAE, and ITAE are considered as a simultaneous
multi-objective function.
The Pareto optimal solution of this multi-objective function is based
on the fuzzy logic technique [44]. In this regard, an SVP of +1% p.u is
applied to area-1 at time t = 0 s, as a network disturbance. The SSA is
applied to the multi-objective function to yield the optimal gains of the
PID controllers. It is found that optimal settings of the SSA include
60 search agents and 100 iterations. The optimal values of the four
objective functions are 0.0058, 0.0071, 0.2088, and 0.5534, respec-
tively. Table 8 indicates the optimal gains of these controllers using the
SSA. F1, F2 , and Ptie responses are demonstrated in Fig. 6(a)–(b). The
transient response specifications are shown in Table 9. It can be noted
that these dynamic responses have a satisfactory responses with
minimum fluctuations. This reflects the ability and validity of the
proposed controller to deal with system nonlinearities under a multi-
objective function condition.

4.4. Scenario 4. Performance assessment of the system with nonlinearities

and incorporation of renewable energy sources

This scenario presents an assessment of the system performance

with its nonlinearities and incorporation of RESs using the proposed
SSA-PID controller. In this study, a 85 MW and 50 MW wind farm and
PV power plant are added to both of area-1 and area-2 at t = 0 s, re-
spectively. Therefore, a two unequal area hybrid renewable nonlinear
power system is investigated. To obtain a realistic study, real wind
speed data that extracted from Zafarana wind farm are involved in the
system model, as shown in Fig. 7(a). The wind power fluctuation ap-
pears in Fig. 7(b). A typical PV power that extracted from a field test at
Riyadh city, March 2015 is employed as illustrated in Fig. 7(c). The
ITSE criterion is chosen as a single objective function. It is found that
optimal settings of the SSA include 60 search agents and 100 iterations.
The fitness value records 0.0047. Table 10 indicates the optimal gains
of these controllers. It can be realized that the values of two PID con-
trollers are different due to unequal two area system. F1, F2 , and Ptie
responses are demonstrated in Fig. 8(a)–(b). Notably, at the starting
Fig. 7. Real weather data and System responses for scenario 4. (a) Wind speed. process of the system dynamic operation, the frequency deviation of
(b) Real power of the wind farm. (c) Real power of the PV power plant.
both areas and tie line power change increases momentary due to ex-
cess generation from the RESs. But the SSA-PID controller works effi-
Table 10 ciently to keep the system stable under these renewable uncertainties. It
Optimal values of proposed controllers’ gains for scenario 4. is worthy for noting here that the first 720 min have higher fluctuations
PID kp ki kd N due to sharing PV and wind farm fluctuations to the power system. The
rest of that day (720 to 1440 min), PV is vanished and only the system
1 0.492 1.022 0.613 23.07 is subjected to wind power uncertainty. These dynamic response fluc-
2 0.525 0.078 1.666 0.00 tuation lie within acceptable ranges. These better results point out the
ability of the SSA-PID controller to deal with the hybrid nonlinear

8
H.M. Hasanien and A.A. El-Fergany
Fig. 8. System responses for scenario 4. (a) F . (b) Ptie .
renewable power systems with system variability and uncertainty.
5. Conclusion
This paper has introduced a novel application of the SSA to fine tune
the PID controllers of LFC loop of a multi-area hybrid renewable non-
linear power system. Different nonlinearity that affect the system dy-
namics are included such as the GDB, GRC, CDT, and the effect of cross-
coupling between the AVR and LFC loop. A single and multi-objective
function is built to test the proposed controller application. RESs are
modeled and incorporated in details to form hybrid renewable non-
linear power systems. The simulation results have shown that the
system performance with the SSA-PID controller is superior to that
obtained by other PID controllers. Moreover, the proposed controller is
efficiently control the system under different operating conditions such
as SLPs, SVPs, different single and multi-objective function, and RESs
variability and uncertainty. Therefore, the SSA-PID controller can be
applied to enhance the dynamic responses of different power systems.
Conflict of interest
We wish to confirm that there are no known conflicts of interest
associated with this publication and there has been no significant fi-
nancial support for this work that could have influenced its outcome.
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