IEE 2nd International Conference on Advances in Power System Control, Operation and Management, December 1993, Hang Kong

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A PC-BASED

AUTOMATIC VOLTAGE REGULATOR AND FUZZY
LOGIC POWER SYSTEM STABILIZER
J u a n Shi

L.H.Herron

A.Kalam

Save Energy Research Group

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Victoria University of Technology
P.O.Box 14428, MMC, Melbourne
Victoria 3000. Australia

Abstract

This paper describes the design and implementation of automatic voltage regulator (AVR) and fuzzy logic power system stabilizer (FLPSS) for single machine infinite bus power system. The
AVR was designed using z-domain analytical design method. The proposed
FLPSS employes two nonlinear fuzzy
membership functions to improve its performance. The design and digital simulation studies are carried out using
MATRIXx-a large control system design
and simulation software package. The
design is implemented in a Power System Laboratory with an IBM-486 computer acting as the real time controller.
Both simulation and implementation results show that the proposed PC-based
AVR and FLPSS are very effective.
Keywords: Voltage control, fuzzy logic applications

'ing [1,2].The application of a power system stabilizer (PSS) is to generate a supplementary stabilizing signal, which is applied to the excitation
control loop of a generating unit, t o introduce a
positive damping torque.
In addition to performing the primary control
functions traditionally offered by the analog controls, the PC-based controls have a far greater
deal of flexibility and ability to implement sophisticated control algorithms.
This paper presents a n effective and efficient
Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR) and Fuzzy
Logic Power System Stabilizer (FLPSS) design
which can be easily implemented by computer facility with high accuracy.
The complete system has been simulated using a
MATRIXx software package on Sun workstation.
The digital AVR and FLPSS are implemented using an on-line 486 PC. Both simulation and implementation results for single machine infinite bus
system show that the proposed PC-based AVR
and FLPSS are very effective.
The system configuration for the single machine
infinite bus system is shown in Figure 1.

Introduction

Currently, the availability of powerful PC has led

to their increasing use in all aspects of power control engineering. In future years, they are expected to play an even greater role in power system
control schemes, because of their ability in combining various tasks, on-line updating of data and
providing a logical or quick decision. Thus, the application of a PC-based control in power system is
being increasingly used for monitoring, data acquisition and on-line control.
The success of excitation control in improving
power system dynamic performance in certain situations has led to greater expectations as to the
capability of such control [3]. Because of the small
effective time constants in the excitation system
control ioop, it was assumed that, a large control
effort could be expended through excitation control with a relatively small input of control energy. But the excitation system introduces a large
phase lag a t low system frequencies just above the
natural frequency of the excitation system. Thus
it can be assumed that the voltage regulator in
the excitation system introduces negative damp-

Figure 1: One-machine infinite bus system

2
2.1

Design of AVR
Mathematicle model

The full model for single machine infinite bus system is a 7th order model. A machine model chosen for power system dynamic studies depends not
only on the nature of the problem, but also on
293

the computational facilities and control techniques

available. A simplified first order approximation
voltage loop of the machine is given by:

Where K is the DC gain and Ti, is the open circuit

d-axis time constant of the generator respectively.
These parameter values have been experimentally
determined according to the IEEE test procedure
on a 5kVA, 240V synchronous machine. Therefore, the transfer function between the terminal
voltage and the field voltage can be represented

Figure 2: The voltage regulator loop

as :

0.2622
G u ( s )= 1 + 0.2126s
The exciter is modeled using field drive unit and
the time constant of the unit is found to be very
small compared t o the significant time constant of
the system under study and is therefore, neglected.
The transfer function of the field drive unit is:

scale power system, the sampling time has been

chosen as 25ms. Then the open-loop pulse hansfer
function becomes G A V R ( Z ) G ( ZNext
) . define the
desired closed-loop pulse transfer function as F ( z ) :

G F D U (=
~A
)
(3)
where A is the gain of the field drive unit and is
found to be 25 in this case. The three phase line
voltages are transformed t o a proportional DC signal which is measured by the A/D converter. The
sensor circuit, which rectifies, filters and reduces
the terminal voltage t o 5V for comparison, whose
transfer function is found experimentally and is
given by:

O.O29z-'
(9)
1 - O.889~-'
From the given system transfer function the output sequence of the system can be expected to
satisfy the transient criteria. It is required that
the system exhibit a finite settling time with zero
steady-state error.

G ( z )= A *

G,(S) = -

(4)
1 rs
Again the time constant of the sensor circuit T
is neglected as it is very small compared to the
machine time constant. T h e sensor DC gain B
is found to be 0.0042. To design a digital controller the system transfer function must be transformed from s-domain to the z-domain. For a system transfer function G p ( s ) the
, z-domain transfer
function G p ( z ) ,can be obtained by using the following equation:

F ( 2 ) = a,

The physical reliazability condition is that the

control signal must be less than 10 due to the limitation of the D/24
converter.
If the desired setting time for a unit step input is
0.3 sec,the output sequences are desired as follows:

+
+
+
+

F ( z ) = 3 5 . 2 ~ 3~1 ~. 3 1 8 +
~ 2~ 7~ . 8 1 6 +
~~
2 4 . 7 4 4 ~ - ~2 2 . 0 0 8 +
~ ~1 9~ . 5 6 ~ -+~
1 7 . 4 8 1 5 . 4 5 6+
~ 13.752z-'+
~~
12.216~-lo 1 0 . 8 4 8 ~ - ~+' 9.672~-" (12)

where G p ( s )in this case is equal to:

2.2

(10)

To find the pulse transfer function G A V R ( Zthat

)
will satisfy equation (8), it can be seen that

(5)

G p ( s )= A

+ q z - 1 + .. .+UNZ-N

+ T&,s

AVR Design

+
+

+
+

B F ( z ) = 0.14672-1
0.1304~-~ 0.1160~-~
0 . 1 0 3 1 ~ - ~0 . 0 9 1 7 ~ - ~0 . 0 8 1 5 ~ - ~0 . 0 7 2 5 ~ - ~ +
0.0644~-~+0.0573z-~+0.0509~-~~+0.0453z~~~+
0.0402~-'~
Thus the controller transfer function can be
rewritten as

Further consider the single voltage-regulator loop

as follows:
For a system transfer function G p ( s ) ,the zdomain transfer function G ( z ) ,can be obtained
as in equation (7).

G A V R ( Z=
)

5.0586 - 1.2345z-12
*A
1- BF(Z)

(13)

Figures 3 and 4 show the terminal voltage performance corresponding t o different sudden load

On dealing with the low frequency which is of the

order of a fraction of 1Hz to a few Hz for large

294

stabilizer to maintain good dynamic performance

over a wide range of operating conditions.
Although the self-tuning PSS has offered better
dynamic performance than the fixed gain PSS, it
suffers from a major drawback of requiring model
identification in real-time which is very time consuming, especially for a microcomputer with limited computational capacity.
There are uncertainties in the electric power system and because of this there always exist iinmodelled dynamics in the power system. As a result,
the PSS does not always perform effectively in the
real electrical power system.
To overcome these problems and to cope
with the changing enviroment in power system,
FLPSS is developed without real-time identification. FLPSS can be easily constructed using a PC
with A / D and D/A interfaces. The operating conditions of the synchronous machine are expressed
by the quantit,ies of speed deviation and acceleration in the phase plane.

changes. The solid line shows the terminal voltage performance with the designed AVR. The dotted line shows the terminal voltage without the
AVR. It is obvious that the system equipped with
the designed AVR kept the output constant under
disturbance conditions.

Figure 3: Terminal voltage corresponding to sudden inductive load change (casel)

3.2

FLPSS Design

Synchronous generator condition can be expressed

with the quantities of speed deviation and acceleration in the phase plane. The phase plane is
divided into t,wo sectors. The stabilizing signal
iJ,(t) is given by:

Us(t) = U S ( k ) ,

-*
2

Figure 4: Terminal voltage corresponding to sudden inductive load change (case2)

3
3.1

(14)

for kAT 5 t 5 ( k + 1)AT in a discrete form, where

k indicates the time kAT, and A T represents the
sample interval. The generator condition a t the
time t = kAT is given by the point p ( k ) in the
phase plane.

The origin in the phase plane is the desired equilibrium point. All the control effort should be directed to moving the current condition p ( k ) towards the origin as quickly as possible.
The accelerating control of the study unit is
achieved by applying a negative stabilizing signal
to the excitation loop, as the electrical output of
the study unit can be decreased by the negative
stabilizing signal. Correspondingly, decelerating
control is achieved by applying a positive stabilizing signal to the excitation loop with the increased
electrical output through the positive stabilizing
signal.
Two fuzzy nonlinear membership functions,
N { B i ( k ) } and P { & ( k ) } ,are defined for the proposed FLPSS as shown in Figure 5 to represent
both the sectors A and B respectively. The term
Bi(k) indicates the phase angle of the point p i ( k ) .
By using these membership functions, the stabilizing signal is computed as follows:

Fuzzy Logic Power System

Stabilizer (FLP SS)
Introduction

The most widely used conventional PSS is the

lead-lag compensator where the gain settings are
fixed at certain values which are determined under particular operating conditions. The design of
the conventional PSS is based on a linear approximation of the nonlinear power plant. Since the
operating point of a power system drifts as a result of continuous load changes or unpredictable
major disturbances such as a three-phase fault,
the fixed gain conventional PSS can not adapt the
stabilizer parameters in real time based on on-line
measurements. Al'though general parameters can
be decided for a conventional PSS according to
a particular range of operating condition, the design procedure appears to be very complex. A
self-tuning PSS has been employed to adapt the

VJ(k) =

295

iJmm - P {Qi (k)} iJmaz]

N{Bi(k)} P{Qa(k))
(16)

G( k ) [ N{ Bi (IC)}

is approximately 1.5Hz, the digital AVR and the

stabilizer were designed with a controller sampling
time of 25 ms.
,The performance of the proposed FLPSS under a step change in reference voltage is shown
in Figures 6 and 7. The performance of the proposed FLPSS has been compared with a conventional PSS when a 0 . 1 step
~ ~ increase and decrease in reference voltage V,,f have been applied.
The dotted line shows the system response without PSS. The dotted line with much smaller magnitude is the system response with a conventional
PSS and the solid line is the system response with
the FLPSS. The results show that the proposed
FLPSS gave an overall improved performance.

for D( k ) >_ D, ,

G ( k )= 1.0,

(20)

D(k) = I P(k) I
(21)
The term G ( k ) indicates the gain factor at the
time t = kAT, and G ( k ) is given by a nonlinear
function.
The maximum value of the stabilizing signal
U,,
depends on the generating unit. Distance
parameter D, and angles a and p can be adjusted
t o their optimal values according to a performance
index which is defined as follows:

In order to verify the design for the fuzzy logic controller as well as the simulation results, the fuzzy
controller was implemented and tested on a onemachine infinite bus system.
After the system is run up to speed, the generator was synchronized and connected to an infinite
bus.
In all the tests, the steady state was defined
with an electrical power of 1625W a t 0.9 power
factor. The tests were examined after a sudden
load change. Different load has been applied t o
test the robustness of the system response.
Figures 8-13 show the rotor angle and speed
deviation corresponding to different sudden load
changes respectively. Figures 8,lO and 12 show the
system response without PSS. Figures 9,11 and 13
are the results with a FLPSS. To verify the robustness of the system performance, different operating loading conditions have been applied and
similar result has been obtained. Figure 12 and 13
are the results under another operating condition.
The study shows that the system with a FLPSS
increase the system damping dramatically.

J =

[tkA~(k)]

(22)

k=l

The index J is specified to investigate the time

optimality of the study unit. According to the values of the performance index, the optimal settings
of the adjustable parameters can be determined.
T h e function P { e i ( k ) } can be expressed as follows:
for 0 5 8, 5 00
0
2[VI2

6
for Bo

0
(23)

+ 180 + a 5 8i 5 360

Conclusions

In this paper a digital automatic voltage regulator

(AVR) and fuzzy power system stabilizer (FLPSS)
have been designed for single machine infinite bus
power system. The AVR and FLPSS have been
implemented using the on-line IBM PC as the real
time controller. The simulation results show that
the proposed FLPSS provided better dynamic performance under disturbance conditions than the
conventional PSS. The design of the FLPSS does
not require mathematical model representation of
the synchronous machine and power plant and
is quicker and easier to implement than the selftuning PSS which requires real-time model identification. Both simulation and implementation
results show that the digital AVR maintains the
terminal voltage values under various loading conditions and FLPSS increases the system damping
dramatically. The studies also show that the pro-

Where all the angles in the above equation are

in degrees. 00 a / 2 and 00 180 01/2 are the
crossover points.

Implementation Study

Simulation Study

The simulation study results presented here were

obtained on a 5kVA synchronous generator driven
by a dc motor and represented by a third order
linearized model with parameters as shown in the
Appendix. The generator was initially loaded at
0.9 power factor. Since the power system oscillating frequency corresponding to a disturbance

296

posed AVR and FLPSS is effective over different

operating conditions.

References
LARSEN,E.V.,SWANN,D.A.:Applying
Power System Stabilisers.IEEE Trans.,PAS100, 1981, p p . 3017-3046.
AND E RS 0N ,P.M .,FO UAD ,A.A., : Pow e r
System Control and Stability. Iowa State
University Press, Ames, Iowa, 1977.

DEMELLO,F.P.,CONCORDIA,C.:
Concepts
of Synchronous Machine Stability as Affected
by Excitation Control,IEEE Trans., PAS88,1969, p p . 316-329.

/I\,,

/I\,,

95tlO

180

275305

350

Figure 5: Membership functions

HSU ,Y .Y.,LIOU,K.L.:Design of Self-tuning

PID Power System Stabiliser for Synchronous
Generator. IEEE Trans., EC-2, 1987, p p .
-343-348.
HIYAMA,T:Application of Rule-Based Stabilising Controller to Electrical Power System.IEE Proc. C, Vol. 136, No.3,1989,pp.
1 75-181.
H IYA 31A ,T SA M ES 1 I hl A ,T : Fuzzy Logic
Control Scheme for On-line Stabilisation of
Multimachine Power System. Fuzzy Seis and
Systems 39 (1991), pp.181-194
I

ZIMMERMANN,H.J.:Fuzzy Set Theory and

Its Applications. Kluwer-Nijhoff Publishing
Company, 1985.

APPENDIX
One-machine infinite bus system generator unit
data:
x d = 1.027pu
x; = 0 . 4 7 9 ~ ~
xq = 0 . 4 8 9 ~ ~
Ti, = 0.345s
H = 0.764s
W b = 314rad/sec
R, = 0 . 0 2 ~ ~
x, = 0.5pu

Lwm-

Figure 6: Rotor angle corresponding to step

change in reference voltage

Figure 7: Speed deviation corresponding to step

change in reference voltage

297

-10

-20

-25

-301
0

'

'

'

'

'

IO

'
12

'

14

'

16

I8

20

tlmc m sccmda

Figure 11: Speed deviation corresponding to sudden load change (with FLPSS)

Figure 8: Rotor angle corresponding to sudden

load change (without PSS)

mtor sngle auh fuaypss

-=I
-30

'

'

'

'

'

IO

12

14

16

18

20

-15Li

U
,

-200

'

'

IO

'

I2

'

14

'

16

'

18

8
I

IO

I2
I

14
I

16
I

18

Figure 12: Rotor angle corresponding to sudden

load change (without PSS)

Figure 9: Rotor angle corresponding to sudden

load change (with FLPSS)

4'
0

'

20

tunc m sccmds

Figure 13: . Rotor angle corresponding to sudden

load change (with FLPSS)

Figure 10: Speed deviation corresponding to sudden load change (without PSS)

298