Design and implementation of maiden dual-level controller for ameliorating frequency control in a hybrid microgrid

It is known that keeping the power balance between generation and demand is crucial in containing the system frequency within acceptable limits. This is especially important for renewable based distributed hybrid microgrid (DHµG) systems where deviations are more likely to occur. In order to address these issues, this article develops a prominent dual-level “proportional-integral-one plus double derivative {PI−(1 + DD)} controller” as a new controller for frequency control (FC) of DHµG system. The proposed control approach has been tested in DHµG system that consists of wind, tide and biodiesel generators as well as hybrid plug-in electric vehicle and an electric heater. The performance of the modified controller is tested by comparing it with standard proportional-integral (PI) and classical PID (CPID) controllers considering two test scenarios. Further, a recently developed mine blast technique (MBA) is utilized to optimize the parameters of the newly designed {PI − (1 + DD)} controller. The controller’s performance results are compared with cases where particle swarm optimization (PSO) and firefly (FF) techniques are used as benchmarks. The superiority of the MBA-{PI − (1 + DD)} controller in comparison to other two strategies is illustrated by comparing performance parameters such as maximum frequency overshoot, maximum frequency undershoot and stabilization time. The displayed comparative objective function (J) and J_FOD index also shows the supremacy of the proposed controller. With this MBA optimized {PI − (1 + DD)} controller, frequency deviations can be kept within acceptable limits even with high renewable energy penetration.