Automatic Generation Control of Hydropower Systems Using a Novel Quasi-oppositional Harmony Search Algorithm

Abstract This article visualizes the behavior of a hydropower system in view of its automatic generation control through the adoption of a novel quasi-oppositional harmony search algorithm. The improvements in automatic generation control performance in reference to the proposed quasi-oppositional harmony search, as studied in a single- and two-area hydro–hydropower system models, are presented here. Both the qualitative and the quantitative aspects of the proposed algorithm are investigated by comparing its optimization performance with two powerful tuning methods (internal model control and maximum peak resonance specification) as reported in recent literature. Further, the robustness analysis of the single-area test system is carried out by changing the time constant of the hydro-turbine in the range of ±50%. For the two-area test system, a comparative dynamic performance analysis is also carried out by applying step load perturbation at unequal time intervals in both areas. It is established from the obtained simulation results that the proposed quasi-oppositional harmony search improves the overall system performance and may be adopted as a constrained optimization problem for the hydropower system.