Automatic generation control of three area hydro-thermal power systems with electric and mechanical governor

This paper presents the dynamic performance of interconnected three area hydrothermal power systems with conventional controllers. In this work, area 1 and area 2 consists of thermal power plant while area 3 consists of hydro power plant. The thermal and hydro power plant incorporate with reheat turbine and either mechanical governor or electric governor respectively. The conventional Proportional Integral (PI) controller is used in load frequency control. The Integral Time Absolute Error (ITAE) optimization criterion is used for the design of conventional controller gain. Performance of mechanical and electric governor is compared with and without considering generation rate constraint effects. Also the performance of Electric governor is studied with Integral (I) and Proportional Integral (PI) controller. The simulation result shows that electric governor improves the control performance more efficiently than the mechanical governor. One percentage of step load has been considered in either area of the system for this investigation.