Advanced digital techniques applied to turbine generator excitation control

The automatic voltage regulator (AVR) is the key part of the excitation control system of a large turbogenerator. The paper concentrates on the implementation and evaluation of a self-tuning AVR. The generalised predictive control (GPC) strategy has been used for the design of the controller. Schemes to improve the robustness of the parameter estimator of the self-tuning algorithm have been employed. The self-tuning AVR has been evaluated using a software simulator as well as a laboratory model turbogenerator. Results relevant to the choice of some of the 'tuning knobs', which are a feature of GPC, are presented.