Abstract
One of the most crucial control aspects in electric power networks is ensuring constant voltage levels throughout different circumstances. To overcome this problem, an automatic voltage regulator (AVR) is installed in the electrical power networks to preserve the voltage at its allowable range. In this paper, a fuzzy-based PID controller was used to enhance the AVR dynamic performance under several operating conditions. Moreover, an Equilibrium Optimizer (EO) algorithm was used to initialize the controller gains. The validation of the proposed controller was proven through three different systems. The first was a simple AVR system under fixed and dynamic references. The proposed fuzzy EO PID controller proved its superiority in this case through the reduction of voltage overshoot by around 3−28% compared with the reported methods in the literature. Then, the fault-ride through capability of the proposed controller was proven through the second system, which was the Kundur two-area system suffering from a 3-phase fault condition, where the overshoot with the proposed controller was reduced by 4−7% compared with the default controller and modern weighted method reported in the literature. Lastly, an IEEE 9-bus system performance was tested with the proposed controller under normal, faulty, and dynamic loading conditions. Again, the proposed controller succeeded in reducing the maximum overshoot by around 5% compared with the default controller in the system. Moreover, the proposed controller achieved a seamless transition between the islanding and grid-connected mode of operation.