POWER SYSTEM AND POWER PLANT CONTROL

This chapter highlights applications of meta-heuristic methods to achieve optimal power system operation and control. It begins with the active power and frequency control problem and introduces the concept of load frequency control for controlling frequency and tie-line power flow for interconnected power systems following load perturbations. The chapter shows how the operation of various elements like onload tap changer, automatic voltage regulator, and shunt compensators can be optimized to minimize the system losses while maintaining the desired system parameters like voltages and line flows at appropriate levels. Almost all of the optimization problems have their own challenges, the chapter presents a comparison of performance of different methods while solving a given problem and improvements in these methods to make them suitable for various power system operation-related optimization problems. To improve the coordinated control performance of a large-scale supercritical/ultra-supercritical power unit, an intelligent model predictive optimal control method using constrained particle swarm optimization is proposed.