A Novel Flower Pollination Algorithm to Solve Load Frequency Control for a Hydro-Thermal Deregulated Power System

Load frequency control plays a vital role in power system operation and control. LFC regulates the frequency of larger interconnected power systems and keeps the net interchange of power between the pool members at predetermined values for the corresponding changes in load demand. In this paper, the two-area, hydrothermal deregulated power system is considered with Redox Flow Batteries (RFB) in both the areas. RFB is an energy storage device, which converts electrical energy into chemical energy, that is used to meet the sudden requirement of real power load and hence very effective in reducing the peak shoots. With conventional proportional-integral (PI) controller, it is difficult to get the optimum solution. Hence, intelligent techniques are used to tune the PI controller of the LFC to improve the dynamic response. In the family of intelligent techniques, a recent nature inspired algorithm called the Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA) gives the global minima solution. The optimal value of the controller is determined by minimizing the ISE. The results show that the proposed FPA tuned PI controller improves the dynamic response of the deregulated system faster than the PI controller for different cases. The simulation is implemented in MATLAB environment.