This paper presents a new design technique to determine the optimal values of proportional-integral-derivative controller gains of an automatic voltage regulator, using the evolutionary algorithm namely 'Cuckoo Search'. The dynamic performance of the proposed controller is evaluated by estimating its transient response characteristics, such as, rise time, settling time, maximum peak overshoot, and steady-state error. In addition, a thorough comparison of the time response characteristics, obtained with proposed controller and other existing evolutionary algorithm based controllers is made to demonstrate its external attributes and adeptness. Comparative analysis illustrates that the proposed controller can be considered as a significant device in the subject area of the power systems as it offers, more energy efficient, robust, and fast convergence characteristics than the controllers, considered here for the discussions. Furthermore, robustness of proposed controller has also been investigated by allowing 50% uncertainty in the automatic voltage regulator system. Finally, the stability of an automatic voltage regulator system with proposed controller is investigated through root-locus and bode plots. It is revealed that the proposed controller not only capable to provide good dynamic response, but also exhibits stable performance for wide range of open loop gains.
Keywords: Automatic voltage regulator; Cuckoo search; PID controller.
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