Improved particle swarm optimization based load frequency control in a single area power system

In this paper, an improved particle swarm optimization (IPSO) based load frequency control (LFC) of a single area power system is presented. Although the Particle Swarm Optimization approaches have several advantages, they can still have drawbacks like local optimal trapping due to premature convergence(i.e. exploration problem). This paper proposes an improved PSO framework adopting a crossover operation scheme to increase exploitation capability of PSO. The study has been realized for control of a single area interconnected power system with IPSO optimized self-tuning PID controller. The comparison between a conventional Proportional-Integral (PI) controller and the proposed PSO based controller showed that the proposed controller can generate a better transient response for a step load change. For this application, MATLAB-Simulink software is used.