Energy Conversion and Management 52 (2011) 17631770

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Energy Conversion and Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman

Application of an improved PSO algorithm to optimal tuning of PID gains

for water turbine governor
Hongqing Fang , Long Chen, Zuyi Shen
College of Energy & Electrical Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210098, PR China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper, an improved particle swarm optimization (IPSO) algorithm is proposed. Besides the individ-
Received 10 February 2010 ual best position and the global best position, a nominal average position of the swarm is introduced in
Received in revised form 8 November 2010 IPSO. The performance of IPSO is compared to different PSO variants with ve well-known benchmark
Accepted 21 November 2010
functions. The experimental results show that the proposed IPSO algorithm improves the searching per-
Available online 5 January 2011
formance on the benchmark functions. And then, IPSO, as well as other PSO variants, is applied to optimal
tuning of ProportionalIntegralDerivative (PID) gains for a typical PID control system of water turbine
Keywords:
governor. The computer simulation results of an actual hydro power plant in China show that IPSO algo-
Computer simulation
Particle swarm optimization
rithm has stable convergence characteristic and good computational ability, and it is an effective and eas-
PID gains tuning ily implemented method for optimal tuning of PID gains of water turbine governor.
Swarm intelligence 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Water turbine governor

1. Introduction Orelind et al. developed an optimal PID gains schedule by using a

Hydropower is an important and vital renewable energy re-
source, which converts the energy in owing water into electricity.
Usually, a typical hydropower plant consists of water tunnel, pen-
stock, surge tank, hydraulic turbine, speed governor, generator as
well as electrical network. While, a hydropower plant is a complex
system that hydrodynamics and mechano-electric dynamics are all
involved in such a nonlinear dynamic system [1]. Moreover, water
turbine governor systems are multi-parameter, high dimension
complex systems with nonlinear, time varying and non-minimum
phase characteristics. In modern hydropower plants, conventional
PID controller is widely applied in water turbine governor systems
for its practicability and robustness. The primary problem associ-
ated with water turbine governor systems is how to optimal tuning
the parameters of PID controller, i.e., the determination of PID
gains for satisfactory control performance. In order to get better
dynamic performance, guarantee security and sustainable utiliza-
tion of equipments and plants, PID gains must be well tuned.
Many methods have been reported for improving the setting
performance of PID gains of water turbine governor system in
the past decades. Sanathana proposed a frequency domain method
[2], which tried to determine the controller transfer function to
match a reference model transfer function, and then to get a pre-
specied satisfactory response of the entire closed-loop system;
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 13913888618.
E-mail addresses: fanghongqing@sohu.com (H. Fang), cdalong@hhu.edu.cn
(L. Chen), richardshen@hhu.edu.cn (Z. Shen).
gradient searching algorithm to minimize a quadratic performance
criterion at different load point [3]. During operation, the gain sets
are switched in depending on gate position and speed error magni-
tude. Wozniak designed a graph to predict the optimum PI gains by
pole cancellation method, which is based on the four parameters of
the water turbine governor system: the time constants of water
column and of he rotor inertia and the self-regulation constants
of the turbine and of the loading grid [4]. Li and Malik described
an orthogonal test approach, which has been implemented in a
synthesis test instrument and integrated into a microcomputer-
based water turbine governor [5]. This approach is based on com-
binatorial theory and the key elements are to design an orthogonal
table to select the tests to be done among the complete sets and
analyze the results to determine the best level. Lansberry and Woz-
niak investigated an enhanced genetic algorithm (GA) as one pos-
sible means of adaptively optimizing water turbine governor PID
gains, which showed GA can effectively follow the changes in
hydropower plant parameters and produce optimal control param-
eters [6]. Jiang et al. proposed an improved evolutionary program-
ming (EP) method incorporated with deterministic chaos dynamics
into the mutation operation of EP to optimize the PID parameters
of water turbine governor systems [7]. This method develops the
traditional concept that implements mutation operation with a
xed random distribution using a quasi-random deterministic
way to generate the mutation factor. Fang et al. introduced a meth-
od for computation of all stabilizing PI controllers which is based
on the plant model in time domain [8]. By using the extraordinary
feature results from Kronecker sum operation, an explicit equation

0196-8904/$ - see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2010.11.005
1764 H. Fang et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 52 (2011) 17631770
of control parameters dening the stability boundary in parametric
space is obtained. Beyond stabilization, this method is used to shift
all poles to a shifted half plane that guarantees a specied settling
time of response.
However, for the complicated water turbine governor system,
which the linearized model is a non-minimum-phase one, these
methods usually have some defects to some extent. For example,
in the frequency domain method, the transfer function of reference
model must retain exactly the same zeros to the transfer function
of hydro power plant, otherwise, the control system will turn out
unstable. Moreover, the real plant presents an unsatisfactory oscil-
lations with rst order linear model for water turbine governor
system. For orthogonal test approach, it is not easy to design the
orthogonal test table and it does not search in a complete PID gains
space. Gradient searching algorithm and genetic algorithm usually
have a relative lower convergence speed and lower precision. Pole
cancellation method and Kronecker sum operation need the de-
signer to have the comprehensive and pre-requisite knowledge
about hydropower plant and specic control theory, and they are
difcult to be implemented. Deterministic chaos dynamics incor-
porated into the mutation operation of evolutionary programming
makes this approach more complicated and to take longer time for
convergence. Therefore, a simplied and easily implemented ap-
proach is especially reasonable for the designer of water turbine
governor system.
Recently, a new evolutionary computation technique, called
particle swarm optimization (PSO) was rstly introduced by Eber-
hart and Kennedy in 1995, which is inspired by social behavior ob-
servable in nature [9]. Compared with other optimization
algorithm, PSO can be developed over a very simple theoretical
framework and implemented with a few lines of computer codes,
requiring only primitive mathematical operators. Besides, it is
computationally inexpensive in terms of both memory require-
ments and speed [10]. As one of stochastic algorithms, classical
PSO was originally developed for optimization in a continuous
space and it has been recently adapted to optimization in binary
spaces, also presenting good performance when applied to discon-
tinuous objective functions and used in the optimization of many
engineering elds. Chen et al. presented a hybrid training algo-
rithm of PSO with diversity learning and gradient descent method
for training the local linear wavelet neural network [11]. Costa
et al. proposed PSO method to obtain the global minimum for
the steady-state operation of styrene polymerization in a tubular
reactor [12]. Liu et al. used PSO to obtain the at transmission
spectrum of the long period ber grating in range of 80 nm [13].
In electric power and energy system elds, Park et al. presented
a modied PSO algorithm to solve the nonsmooth economic dis-
patch with nonsmooth cost functions, which a position adjustment
strategy is incorporated into the PSO framework in order to pro-
vide the solutions satisfying the inequality constraints [14]. Huang
et al. proposed PSO to identifying the autoregressive moving aver-
age with exogenous variable (ARMAX) model for one-day to one-
week ahead hourly load forecasts [15]. Acharjee and Goswami
developed a robust, nondivergent power ow method by using
PSO technique [16]. Shayeghi et al. proposed PSO to solve the mul-
ti-objective design problem of multi-machine power system stabi-
lizers (PSSs) [17]. Assadian et al. investigated the ability of
guaranteed convergence PSO and PSO in cooperation with graph
theory for network reconguration to reduce the power loss and
enhancement of voltage prole of distribution systems [18].
However, like others stochastic algorithm, classical PSO also
suffers from the premature convergence problem, especially in
large scale and complex problems. In order to improve the perfor-
mance of classical PSO, numerous variants have been reported. Shi
and Eberhart proposed the linearly decreasing inertia weight ap-
proach in [19,20], fuzzy adaptive inertia weight approach in [21],
stochastic inertia weight approach in [22,23], Chatterjee and Siarry
proposed the nonlinear inertia weight variation for dynamic adap-
tation in PSO in [24]. These variants try to change the inertia
weight to make the PSO algorithm to have a strong global search-
ing ability in the early stage as well as a strong local searching abil-
ity in the later stage. Eberhart and Shi comparied inertia weights
and constriction factors in PSO in [25], Clerc and Kennedy analyzed
and explained the stability and convergence of PSO in a multidi-
mensional complex space [26], Blackwell and Branke utilized the
multi-swarm scheme instead of a single swarm of classical PSO
to work in dynamic environments [27]. Some variants try to asso-
ciate with other optimization algorithms, e.g., Cai et al. proposed
PSO with adaptive inertia weight factor and chaotic local search
based on the logistic equation and the Tent equation to solve eco-
nomic dispatch problems with generator constraints [28]. Shi et al.
proposed a PSO-GA-based hybrid algorithm for the optimization of
nonlinear functions in [29]. Compared to classical PSO, these vari-
ants always have relatively better performance. But these improve-
ments either can be applied in some aspects only or must design its
parameters in advance when used in practical problem. Especially,
these variants did not change the three terms composed structure
of classical PSO, therefore, information transferred just between
the individual and the swarm global best individual, ignoring other
useful information of other individuals [30]. He et al. presented a
PSO variant with passive congregation to improve the performance
of classical PSO. By introducing passive congregation to PSO, infor-
mation can be transferred among individuals of the swarm that
will help individuals to avoid misjudging information and becom-
ing trapped by poor local minima [31]. Seo et al. proposed a mul-
tigrouped PSO with the concept of repulsive velocity to
encourage individual particles, located in the territory of the global
best of other group, to escape from the other groups territory in a
more efcient manner [32]. Ho et al. introduced the new formulas
and strategies for updating the particles velocity and position by
using craziness and adaptive velocity adjustment scheme to en-
hance the performance of PSO [33]. Selvakumar and Thanushkodi
proposed a split-up in the cognitive behavior, which the particle
is made to remember its worst position also. Then, a simple local
random search procedure is integrated with the PSO to solve the
nonconvex economic dispatch problems [34]. Yuan et al. intro-
duced the concept of repeller into PSO and incorporated with cha-
otic sequence based on logistic map to improve the performance of
PSO to solve the problem of short-term generation scheduling of a
cascaded hydro system [35].
Inspired by the thoughts of adding a new component or distur-
bance in classical PSO [3135], an improved PSO algorithm is pro-
posed in this paper, which is conceptually more concise and
performs more effectively than some of PSO variants. In the pro-
posed IPSO, each particle can utilize more information from almost
all other particles in the swarm, rather than just the information of
the global best one and that of itself. The experimental results
based on ve well-known benchmark functions indicate that the
proposed IPSO algorithm has a good performance on global conver-
gence and precision. And then, the proposed IPSO, as well as other
PSO variants, is applied to optimal tuning of PID gains for a typical
PID control system of water turbine governor. The digital simula-
tion results show that IPSO algorithm is an effective method for
optimal tuning of PID gains. And under the optimized PID gains,
the small hydraulic transient process is stable with low overshoot
level and fast step response.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 briey
describes the typical PSO variants. Section 3 describes the pro-
posed IPSO. In Section 4, the benchmark functions, the experimen-
tal setups, as well as the performance comparison results are
presented. Section 5 describes a typical PID control system of water
turbine governor, the implementation of PSO-PID controller and
 H. Fang et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 52 (2011) 17631770
the comparison results. Section 6 summarizes
contributions.
2. PSO algorithm and its variants
2.1. Linearly decreasing inertia weight in PSO (LDWPSO)
Suppose that a swarm consists of m particles moving around in
a d-dimensional search space. The ith particle at the tth iteration
has a position Xi(t) = (Xi1(t), Xi2(t), . . . , Xid(t)), which is a feasible
solution of an optimal problem, a velocity Vi(t) = (Vi1(t),
Vi2(t), . . . , Vid(t)), and the best solution ever achieved so far by it-
self, individual best position Pbest, which is represented by Pi(t) =
(Pi1(t), Pi2(t), . . . , Pid(t)). The best solution ever achieved so far by
the whole swarm, global best position Gbest, which is represented
by Pg(t) = (Pg1(t), Pg2(t), . . . , Pgd(t)). Then, the velocity and the posi-
tion of the ith particle in the kth dimension at the next iteration
will be calculated as:
V ik t 1 w  V ik t c1  r 1  Pik t  X ik t c2  r 2
 Pgk t  X ik t
X ik t 1 X ik t V ik t 1
where w is inertia weight, c1 and c2 are two positive constants,
called cognitive learning rate and social learning rate, respectively,
and r1 and r2 are two uniformly random numbers from the interval
[0.0, 1.0].
A linearly decreasing inertia weight [19,20] was rst introduced
by Shi and Eberhart in 1998. At the beginning of the searching pro-
cess, a larger inertia factor is applied for global exploration. During
the search, inertia weight is becoming smaller and smaller for local
exploitation, which leads to signicant improvement in the perfor-
mance of classical PSO. The linearly decreasing inertia weight is
modied as:
wmax  wmin
wt wmax  t
t max
And the velocity is modied as:
V ik t 1 wt  V ik t c1  r1  Pik t  X ik t c2  r 2
 Pgk t  X ik t
where wmax is the initial inertia weight, wmin is the nal inertia
weight, and tmax is the number of maximum iteration. Normally,
wmax is set to 0.9 and wmin is set to 0.4.
2.2. Constriction factor approach in PSO (CFAPSO)
A constriction factor was introduced into PSO to control the
convergence properties of the particles [25,26]. The constriction
factor is added in Eq. (1) giving:
V ik t 1 v  V ik t c1  r 1  Pik t  X ik t c2  r 2
 Pgk t  X ik t
2 of the swarm, Gave, could be expressed as:
v  p 6
2u u2  4u
u c1 c 2 ; u > 4
Usually, both c1 and c2 are set to 2.05, giving as a result v equal to
0.729.
1765
the main 2.3. Stochastic inertia weight in PSO (SIWPSO)
Eberhart and Shi [22,23] proposed another variant in which the
inertia weight is randomly selected according to a uniform distri-
bution in the range [0.5, 1.0] with a mean value of 0.75. This vari-
ant was inspired by constriction factor approach. The inertia
weight and the velocity are modied as:
wt 0:5 r0 =2:0 8
V ik t 1 wt  V ik t c1  r 1  Pik t  X ik t c2  r2
 Pgk t  X ik t 9
where r0 is a uniform distribution number in the range [0.0, 1.0].
In this version, the acceleration coefcients c1 and c2 in (9) are
set to 1.494 as a result of the multiplication v  c1,2 in (5). Although
this variant was originally proposed for dynamic environments, it
has also been shown to be a competitive optimizer for static ones.
In LDWPSO, CFAPSO, as well as SIWPSO, the position is updated
as Eq. (2).
1
3. The proposed PSO algorithm
2
In the classical PSO variants, mentioned above, the particles ad-
just their movements based on the hypothesis that the social shar-
ing of information among conspecics offers an evolutionary
advantage [9], following two factors:
(1) The autobiographical memory, which remembers the best
previous position of each particle (Pbest) in the swarm.
(2) The publicized knowledge, which is the best solution (Gbest)
found currently by the swarm.
Therefore, the sharing of information among conspecics is
achieved by employing the publicly available information Gbest.
However, there is no information sharing among particles except
that Gbest broadcasts the information to the other individuals. As
3
the premature convergence is concerned, a main reason is that
the fast information sharing among the individuals in PSO, only fol-
lowing Pbest and Gbest, leads to the swarm diversity declining and
the particle clustering quickly. Some important information about
the searching space may be ignored through overemphasis on just
4 the single best individual of the swarm.
Actually, as a member of the entire swarm, each particle will
contribute its information, whatever good or bad, to inuence
the movements of the swarm. Therefore, the information only of
Pbest and Gbest are not sufcient enough. Besides Pbest and Gbest,
the information of other individuals should be considered and be
utilized during the searching process. Then, the particle should
not search a region just dened by the two points mentioned
above. Inspired by this idea, the IPSO is proposed.
Still, suppose that a swarm consists of m particles, then, at the
tth iteration, the positions matrix of the m particles can be ex-
pressed as X(t) = (X1(t), X2(t), . . . , Xm(t)). At each iteration, the glo-
bal best position, Gbest, is the best position of the m particles, and
5 the global worst position, Gworst, is the worst position of the m par-
ticles, by the same way. Exclude Gbest and Gworst, the average posi-
tion of another (m  2) particles, called nominal average position
X
m2
Xi t
Pa t 10
7 i1
m2
where Pa(t) = (Pa1(t), Pa2(t), . . . , Pad(t)) is a d-dimensional vector. The
idea of excluding the Gbest position and the Gworst position of the
1766 H. Fang et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 52 (2011) 17631770

swarm is motivated from the referees give scores to athletes in
gymnastic game, which exclude the highest score and lowest score.
In order to keep the model simple and uniform with classical
PSO, the velocity of the proposed IPSO is updated as:
V ik t 1 wt  V ik t c1  r1  P ik t  X ik t c2  r 2
 Pgk t  X ik t c3  r 3  Pak t  X ik t 11
where c3 is still a positive constant, called nominal more informa-
tion learning rate, and r3 is a random number uniformly from the
interval [0.0, 1.0].
The inertia weight is updated as same as Eq. (8), and the posi-
tion is updated as same as Eq. (2).
4. Experiments and results
4.1. Benchmark functions
The basic information of the ve well-known benchmark func-
tions is list in Table 1. To evaluate the performance of the proposed
IPSO, three variants of PSO were applied for comparisons: LDW-
PSO, CFAPSO and SIWPSO. The parameters setting of the PSO vari-
ants are shown in Table 2. The particles have been initialized with
a random position and a random velocity. In both cases, the values
in every dimension have been randomly chosen according to a uni-
form distribution over the initial range [100, 100]. During a run,
the maximum velocity has been set as vmax = 100. Since the newly
introduced nominal more information learning rate c3 is important
for the search results of IPSO, therefore, what value of c3 is suitable
for IPSO shall be researched. In this paper, differently xed values
of c3 from 0.1 to 1.5 were selected for all these experiments in or-
der to get the proper value c3 for different benchmark functions.
IPSO and other PSO variants were both implemented using Micro-
soft Visual Basic 6.0 programming language on a PC with Intel Pen-
tium III 1 GHz processor.

In the experimental studies, a set of ve well-known bench- 4.2. Experimental results

mark functions [30], which are widely adopted in the relative re-
search of PSO, has been applied to evaluate the performance of The performance tests have been performed. Performance test
the proposed IPSO in comparison with others. is for the best function result usually after a short run of 1000 iter-
ations since it is a measure of sloppy speed, which indicates the
(1) Sphere function: algorithm is close to the global optimum for unimodal functions
or nding the best part of a locally optimal region on some of these
X
n
multimodal functions. For this case, the average best results
f1 x x2i
(Mean) and standard deviations (Std.) for each algorithm obtained
i1
from 100 trials are list in Tables 3 and 4.
(2) Rosenbrock function: From Table 3, it can be found that IPSO generates good result on
n1 h i function f1 when c3 = 0.2; for functions f2 and f3, the best results are
X  2
f2 x 100 xi1  x2i xi  12 generated at the point c3 = 0.3; for function f4, IPSO generates good
i1 result when c3 = 0.5; with c3 = 0.8, IPSO has a the best point for
function f5. The results can be explained that a relatively small va-
(3) Rastrigrin function:
lue of c3 strengths the inuence of Gbest, and enhances the search-
X
n
 2  ing ability of the swarm for unimodal functions f1 and f2; however,
f3 x xi  10 cos2pxi 10 a relatively bigger value of c3 guarantees swarm with more stron-
i1
ger searching capability for multimodal functions f3, f4 and f5 .
(4) Griewank function: From Table 4, it can be seen that IPSO outperforms PSO variants
 for all of the benchmark functions. Especially, IPSO outperforms
1 X n Yn
xi SIWPSO, the special case of IPSO. Moreover, the results in Tables
f4 x x2i  cos p 1
4000 i1 i1 i 3 and 4 show that IPSO is easy to escape from the local optima
and converge to the global optimum robustly especially when fac-
(5) Schaffers f6 function: ing to a complex multimodal functions. The reasons lie in that IPSO
0

q2 1 takes advantages of the more information of the swarm to guide
2 2
B sin x 1 x 2  0:5 C the searching process.
f5 x maximization@0:5    2 A
1 0:001 x21 x22
5. The typical PID control system of water turbine governor
f1f4 are optimization functions with one global optimum (mini- system
mum), while, f5 is with one global optimum (maximum). f1 and
f2 are unimodal functions, however, f3, f4 and f5 are multimodal A typical PID control system is water turbine speed governing
functions, where the number of local minima increases exponen- system [18]. The block diagram of water turbine governor system
tially with the problem dimension. Especially, f5, Schaffers f6 func- is shown in Fig. 1, which consists of PID controller, electro-hydrau-
tion, is a very difcult optimization function with only two lic servo system, water turbine system, generator and load [1]. As
dimensions, which has innite local optima but only one global seen in this gure, c is turbine speed relative deviation set point,
optimum. x is turbine speed relative deviation, y is wicket gate servomotor

Table 2
Table 1 Parameters setting for PSO and its variants.
Parameters and criteria for the test functions.
Parameters LDWPSO CFAPSO SIWPSO IPSO
Functions Dimensions Feasible solution space
Npopsize 20 20 20 20
f1 30 [100, 100] w (0.90.4) N/A 0.5 + r0/2 0.5 + r0/2
f2 30 [100, 100] v N/A 0.729 N/A N/A
f3 30 [100, 100] c1 2.0 2.05 1.494 1.494
f4 30 [100, 100] c2 2.0 2.05 1.494 1.494
f5 2 [100, 100] c3 N/A N/A N/A (0.11.5)
 H. Fang et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 52 (2011) 17631770 1767

Table 3
Results of MIPSO after 1000 iterations of Mean (Std.) for f1f5 and escape rate for f5.

f1 f2 f3 f4 f5
c 0.2 0.3 0.3 0.5 0.8
Mean (Std.) 1.9911e008 (4.0668e008) 135.8420 (199.4713) 94.3503 (42.9615) 0.0147 (0.0188) 0.9999 (3.2826e004)

Table 4
Comparison results of MIPSO and PSO variants for performance test.

Algorithm f1 f2 f3 f4 f5
Mean (Std.) Mean (Std.) Mean (Std.) Mean (Std.) Mean (Std.)
LDWPSO 0.0124 (0.0122) 4.7707e+003 (7.4667e+003) 105.3067 (25.5028) 0.0165 (0.0176) 0.9979 (0.0041)
CFAPSO 2.3891e005 (1.6397e004) 238.9807 (337.6060) 210.1887 (111.8476) 0.0403 (0.0377) 0.9942 (0.0048)
SIWPSO 4.9264e007 (1.3078e006) 286.8806 (410.7394) 113.2402 (41.0441) 0.0260 (0.0330) 0.9955 (0.0049)
IPSO 1.9911e008 (4.0668e008) 135.8420 (199.4713) 94.3503 (42.9615) 0.0147 (0.0188) 0.9999 (3.2826e-004)

Fig. 1. Typical block diagram of a water turbine governor system.

stroke relative deviation, mt is turbine torque relative deviation reference input and turbine speed relative deviation, x, as the out-
and mg0 is load torque relative deviation (all in per unit) [7,8,36]. put to be controlled. A 10% unit step is used as the standard input.
And the closed-loop transfer function of the entire water turbine
5.1. Transfer functions of water turbine governor system governor system [6] can be deduced as:

xs Gpid Gy Gt Gg
The transfer function of water turbine speed governor PID con- Hs s
troller is: cs 1 Gpid Gy Gt Gg
 d3 s3 d2 s2 d1 s d0
Ki Kds 17
Gpid s Kp 12 b5 s5 b4 s4 b3 s3 b2 s2 b1 s b0
s 1 Tns
where
where Kp is the proportional gain; Ki the integral gain; Kd the deriv-
ative gain; Tn the derivative lter time constant, in seconds; and s is b5 eqh T a T w T y T n ;
the Laplace operator; neglecting small time constants, the transfer b4 eqh T a T w T y T a T y T n eqh T a T w T n en eqh T w T y T n ;
function of electro-hydraulic servo system is:
b3 T a T y eqh T a T w T a T n en eqh T w T y en T y T n en eqh T w T n
1  ey eT w T n K p  ey eT w K d ;
Gy s 13
T y s 1
b2 en T y en eqh T w en T n T a ey T n K p ey K d  ey eT w K p
where Ty is the wicket gate servomotor response time, in seconds.  ey eT w T n K i ;
Water and penstock are taken to be incompressible if penstock b1 ey K p ey T n K i  ey eT w K i en ;
is short or medium in length, therefore, inelastic water hammer ef-
b0 e y K i ;
fect is considered. From Fig. 1, the transfer function of water tur-
bine system is [7,8]: d3 ey eT w T n K p ey eT w K d ;
d2 ey T n K p ey K d  ey eT w K p  ey eT w T n K i ;
ey  eqy eh  eqh ey T w s ey 1  eT w s
Gt s 14 d1 ey K p ey T n K i  ey eT w K i ;
1 eqh T w s 1 eqh T w s
d0 ey K i :
eqy eh
e  eqh 15
ey
5.2. Implementation of PSO-PID controller
where Tw is the water starting time, in seconds; ey, eqy, eh, eqh are
partial derivatives of water turbine; the transfer function of gener- A PID controller optimized with IPSO algorithm, as well as other
ator and load is: PSO variants, was developed for a water turbine speed governor
system. It was also called the PSO-PID controller. Since Tn is usually
1
Gg s 16 set as Tn = 0.1  Kd, therefore, IPSO and other PSO variants algo-
T a s en
rithm are mainly utilized to determine three optimal PID gains,
where Ta is the generator unit mechanical time, in seconds and en is i.e., Kp, Ki, and Kd. Obviously, PID gains optimization is in a 3-
the load self-regulation factor. dimentional searching space.
The 10% step speed disturbance test reects the fast tracking In general, the integral of time multiplied by the absolute value
ability to set speed point of water turbine generating unit. For this of error (ITAE) performance criterion [3739] is used for the PID
case, turbine speed relative deviation set point c, is applied as the gains optimizing, which is as follows:
1768 H. Fang et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 52 (2011) 17631770

Z tf
5.3. Case study
J ITAE tjx  cjdt 18
0
To verify the efciency of the PSO-PID controller, an actual
hydropower plant is taken for the example to optimize the water
where tf is the nal time, in seconds and t is the time, in seconds. turbine speed governor PID gains. The required data of this water
A set of good PID gains can yield a good step response that will turbine governor system are list in Table 5. The lower and upper
result in minimization of performance criteria in time domain. The bounds of the three PID gains were all set as [0, 10]. The nal time
performance criteria in time domain include overshoot Mp (in per tf is set as 20 s. The maximum allowable number itermax is set as
unit), settling time ts (in seconds), and steady state error (in per 100, and each algorithm has been performed for 50 trials, repeat-
unit). In steady state, the performance criteria must be minimized edly. In this case, a 10% step speed increase was applied to the tur-
by PSO algorithm. bine speed reference, i.e., c = 0.1. The optimal results compared
with different c3 of IPSO are list in Table 6, and the optimal results
compared between IPSO and other PSO variants are list in Table 7.
Table 5 The traces of the average tness convergence of IPSO with dif-
Parameters of water turbine governor system. ferent c3 and the comparison results to other PSO variants are
Ty Ta Tw ey eqy eh eqh en shown in Fig. 2.
0.3 5.72 0.83 1.40 1.23 0.35 0.13 0.45 From Tables 6 and 7, it can be found that IPSO with different c3,
as well as other PSO, have the same one optimal result of the 50
trails, which means that IPSO with different c3, as well as classical

Table 6
Results for 10% step speed increasing of IPSO.

c3 Kp Ki Kd Tn Mp ts JITAE SR MinIter AveIter

0.05 1.028 0.091 0.0 0.0 0.011 9.47 1.1475 0.94 7 43
0.10 1.028 0.091 0.0 0.0 0.011 9.47 1.1475 1.00 19 37
0.15 1.028 0.091 0.0 0.0 0.011 9.47 1.1475 0.94 13 44
0.20 1.028 0.091 0.0 0.0 0.011 9.47 1.1475 0.98 16 42
0.25 1.028 0.091 0.0 0.0 0.011 9.47 1.1475 0.94 18 54

Table 7
Results for 10% step speed increasing of IPSO and other PSO variants.

Method Kp Ki Kd Tn Mp ts JITAE SR MinIter AveIter

IPSO 1.028 0.091 0.0 0.0 0.011 9.47 1.1475 1.00 19 37
LDWPSO 1.028 0.091 0.0 0.0 0.011 9.47 1.1475 0.98 19 41
CFAPSO 1.028 0.091 0.0 0.0 0.011 9.47 1.1475 0.96 15 39
SIWPSO 1.028 0.091 0.0 0.0 0.011 9.47 1.1475 0.94 15 40

Fig. 2. Prole of average best values.

Fig. 3. Parameters of water turbine speed governor system in small hydraulic transients.
 H. Fang et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 52 (2011) 17631770
PSO variants, are all effective to optimize the PID gains of water
turbine governor system. However, only IPSO with c3 = 0.1 has a
100% success rate (SR), and the minimum iteration (MinIter) is
19, the average iteration (AveIter) for the 50 trials is 37. The results
are obviously better than that of IPSO with other values of c3 and
that of the other PSO variants.
Fig. 2 shows that IPSO generates a relatively faster average con-
vergence rate when c3 = 0.20, but a relatively higher average preci-
sion when c3 = 0.10. Moreover, from the comparison results of IPSO
and other PSO variants, it can be found that IPSO generates the rel-
atively better results with faster convergence rate and higher pre-
cision, especially better than that of SIWPSO, which is the special
version of IPSO on c3 = 0 .
Fig. 3 shows the parameters of water turbine speed governor
system in the small hydraulic transients. The PID gains are set as
the optimal values found by IPSO, which is list in Table 6. Obvi-
ously, the small hydraulic transients are stable with low overshoot
level and fast step response.
6. Conclusion
In this paper, an IPSO algorithm is developed by incorporating a
nominal average position of the swarm into PSO with stochastic
inertia weight. Therefore, more information can be utilized by IPSO
in the searching process. The experimental results show that the
proposed IPSO performs more effectively than some of PSO vari-
ants on global convergence and precision for the test benchmark
functions. And then, the IPSO algorithm and other PSO variants
are applied to optimal tuning of PID gains for a typical PID control
system of water turbine governor. The digital simulation results
show the proposed IPSO algorithm is an effective method for opti-
mal tuning of PID gains.
Acknowledgement
This work was partially supported by the National Natural Sci-
ence Foundation of China under Grant Nos.60874013, 51076041,
the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Chi-
na, under Grant No. 2009B01114, and Qing Lan Project, Jiangsu
Province, China.
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Hongqing Fang was born in Kaifeng, China, in 1975. He
received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in power engi-
neering from Hohai University, Nanjing, China, in 1998
and 2005, respectively.
He pursued his postdoctoral research in the School of
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Wash-
ington State University, USA, from August 2009 to
September 2010.
He is currently an Associate Professor in Automation
Engineering at Hohai University. His current research
interests include swarm intelligence, machine learning,
data mining, nonlinear control, power system control.
1770 H. Fang et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 52 (2011) 17631770
Long Chen was born in Nanjing, China. She received the
B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in economics from Nanjing
University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China, in
2003 and 2005, respectively.
She is currently with the faculty of Hohai University,
Nanjing, China. Her current research interests include
swarm intelligence, simulation, and optimization of
hydropower plants as well as pumped storage schemes.
Zuyi Shen was born in Shanghai, China, in 1936. He
received the B.Sc. degree in power engineering from
Moscow Power Institute, Moscow, Russia, in 1961.
He is currently a Professor of Power Engineering at
Hohai University, Nanjing, China. He has been engaged
in research of hydroelectric generation and speed con-
trol, and brought that research to eld implementation
stage. He was the author or coauthor of a number of
publications and served as a Hydroprojects Consultant.
His current research interests include nonlinear control,
power system control, power system modeling, as well
as simulation.