Robust design of multimachine power system stabilizers based on improved non-dominated sorting genetic algorithms

Power system stabilizers (PSSs) associated with generators are mandatory requirements for damping low-frequency oscillations of a multimachine power system. Nevertheless, PSSs work well at particular network configuration and steady-state conditions for which they were designed. Therefore, the aim of this paper is the design of a robust PSS able to ensure the stability of the system for a wide range of loading conditions and various faults with higher performance. The main motivation for this design is to simultaneously shift as much as could be possible the lightly damped and undamped system electromechanical modes, at different loading conditions and system configurations, into pre-specified zone in the s-plane called D-shape sector. Hence, the problem of robustly tuning the PSSs parameters is formulated as a multiobjective optimization problem (MOP) with an eigenvalue-based objective functions. An improved version of non-dominated sorting genetic algorithms (NSGAII) is proposed to solve this MOP. The performance of the proposed NSGAII-based PSS (NSGAII-PSS) under different loading conditions, system configurations and disturbances is tested and examined for different multimachine power systems. Eigenvalue analysis and nonlinear simulations show the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed controllers NSGAII-PSSs and their ability to provide efficient damping of low-frequency oscillations.