Optimal controllers designs for automatic reactive power control in an isolated wind-diesel hybrid power system.

The paper presents the bacterial foraging optimization algorithm (BFOA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm based robust controllers for voltage deviations due to the variation of reactive power in an isolated wind-diesel hybrid power system. The isolated wind-diesel system consists of wind energy conversion system (WECS) utilizing a permanent magnet induction generator (PMIG). Further, a synchronous generator (SG) is used with the diesel engine set for power generation. The mismatch between generated and consumed reactive power in the system causes voltage fluctuations, which will occur at generator terminals. These oscillations further causes reduction in the stability and quality of the power supply. The static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) and an automatic voltage regulator (AVR) are used to suppress voltage fluctuations in an isolated wind-diesel hybrid power system. The STATCOM is used as a reactive power compensator and the AVR is used to keep the terminal voltage constant for the synchronous generator. Both STATCOM and AVR are having proportional and integral (PI) controllers with single input. In modeling for the system, a normalized co-prime factorization is applied to show the possible unstructured uncertainties in the power system such as variation of system parameters and generating and loading conditions. The performance and robust stability conditions of the control system are formulated as the optimization problem, which is based on the Hα loop shaping. BFOA and PSO algorithms are implemented to solve this optimization problem and to achieve PI control parameters of STATCOM and AVR simultaneously. In order to show the efficiency of the proposed controllers, the performance of the proposed controllers is compared with the performance of the conventional controller and genetic algorithm (GA) based PI controllers for the same wind-diesel system. The dynamic responses of the system for four different small-disturbance case studies has been carried out in MATLAB environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]