Voltage and frequency regulation in a hybrid power system operated by an ALO optimized non-linear cascaded controller

In a maiden attempt, an Ant Lion Optimization (ALO) for optimally tuning cascade Fractional-order proportional-integral and Fractional-order proportional integral derivative (FOPI-FOPID) controller parameters for the frequency and voltage regulation in an interconnected single-area as well as two-area Hybrid Power System (HPS) comprising of a variety of generating sources. The ALO-tuned cascaded FOPI-FOPID controller demonstrates superior performance compared to contemporary evolutionary optimization algorithms such as the grey wolf optimization (GWO), the salp swarm algorithm (SSA), and the whale optimization algorithm (WOA). The superiority of the proposed cascaded controller has been demonstrated by comparing the results with PID and FOPID controllers for the same system with parameters tuned using ALO optimization. Further analysis has been carried out in terms of stability in terms of eigenvalues and sensitivity to random step-load disturbances. Experimental validation has been described by investigating the system in real-time simulation on the OPAL-RT 5700 with the help of RT Lab software.