ISA Transactions 56 (2015) 173187

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ISA Transactions
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/isatrans

Application of multi-objective controller to optimal tuning of PID gains

for a hydraulic turbine regulating system using adaptive grid particle
swam optimization
Zhihuan Chen a, Yanbin Yuan b, Xiaohui Yuan a,n, Yuehua Huang c, Xianshan Li c, Wenwu Li c
a

School of Hydropower and Information Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 430074 Wuhan, China
School of Resource and Environmental Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, 430070 Wuhan, China
c
College of Electrical Engineering and New Energy, China Three Gorges University, 443002 Yichang, China
b

art ic l e i nf o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 10 July 2014
Received in revised form
11 October 2014
Accepted 7 November 2014
Available online 4 December 2014
This paper was recommended for publication by Dr. Ahmad B. Rad.

A hydraulic turbine regulating system (HTRS) is one of the most important components of hydropower
plant, which plays a key role in maintaining safety, stability and economical operation of hydro-electrical
installations. At present, the conventional PID controller is widely applied in the HTRS system for its
practicability and robustness, and the primary problem with respect to this control law is how to
optimally tune the parameters, i.e. the determination of PID controller gains for satisfactory performance. In this paper, a kind of multi-objective evolutionary algorithms, named adaptive grid particle
swarm optimization (AGPSO) is applied to solve the PID gains tuning problem of the HTRS system. This
newly AGPSO optimized method, which differs from a traditional one-single objective optimization
method, is designed to take care of settling time and overshoot level simultaneously, in which a set of
non-inferior alternatives solutions (i.e. Pareto solution) is generated. Furthermore, a fuzzy-based
membership value assignment method is employed to choose the best compromise solution from the
obtained Pareto set. An illustrative example associated with the best compromise solution for parameter
tuning of the nonlinear HTRS system is introduced to verify the feasibility and the effectiveness of the
proposed AGPSO-based optimization approach, as compared with two another prominent multiobjective algorithms, i.e. Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGAII) and Strength Pareto
Evolutionary Algorithm II (SPEAII), for the quality and diversity of obtained Pareto solutions set.
Consequently, simulation results show that this AGPSO optimized approach outperforms than compared
methods with higher efciency and better quality no matter whether the HTRS system works under
unload or load conditions.
& 2014 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Multi-objective
Adaptive grid particle swarm optimization
Hydraulic turbine regulating system
Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm
II (NSGAII)
Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm II
(SPEAII)

1. Introduction
Despite signicant strides in the development of advanced
control schemes over the past decades, such as optimal control,
adaptive control, robust control, neuron control and intelligent
control have been developed for power system stabilization and
oscillation damping process [18], the classical ProportionalIntegral-Derivative (PID) controller and its variants is still a
preferred choice for power plants because of its structural simplicity, reliability, and favorable ratio between performance and cost.
A hydraulic turbine regulating system (HTRS) is the adjustment
component of the hydropower station, which is the biggest
contributor in all the renewable energy [9] and until now PID

Corresponding author. Tel.: 86 18907198929.

E-mail address: yxh71@163.com (X. Yuan).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.isatra.2014.11.003
0019-0578/& 2014 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

controller is the primary choice in the HTRS system to control the

frequency variation and electrical power output of hydro-turbine
generator unit sets (HGU). As is known to all, the performance of
PID controller mainly depends on its setting of the parameters,
thus various controller parameter approaches have been proposed
in literatures and research works for the HTRS system.
The internal model control (IMC) tuning technique [10,11],
which has a single tuning parameter to adjust the performance
and robustness of the controller, is introduced and used in the
latest year for a on-line hydro electric power plant. A remarkable
improvement in stability of this system has been observed with the
IMC tuning method while compared with the traditional singular
frequency based method and ZieglerNichols closed loop optimization. Huek [12] presents PID controller design procedure for a
hydraulic turbine governor meeting sensitivity margin specications in this year. This tuning process does not require an
optimization procedure and incorporates only one chosen tunable

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Z. Chen et al. / ISA Transactions 56 (2015) 173187

parameter but achieves a considerable good result. The robustness

H 2 and H 1 optimization [13,14] are also taken into consideration
for the HGU of hydro-turbine power systems, which is mainly
based on a maximum peak resonance specication that is graphically
supported by Nichols chart, and simulation results show that PID
controller with proposed approach enhancing the damping ability of
the power system following a small step change variation in load for
different cases and gives a better performance than the conventional
PI controller. Intelligent metal-heuristic optimization methods for the
controller design in the hydro-power system have recently received a
lot of attentions from the contemporary researchers [15,16]. By
minimizing the performance indicator criterions of speed deviation,
the optimal PID gains are easy to nd out and, as a result, the desired
excellent dynamic responses are achieved at a given operating point.
However, most of the literatures focus on a single objective optimization and try to achieve good results for a particular objective like
fast tracking or low peak overshooting, etc. But in a practical control
system design there is always existence trade-off between these
competitive objectives. For example, it is impossible for a simple linear
controller, such as the PID controller, to give the shortest rise time
along with a lower overshoot percentage simultaneously [17], and it is
natural to formulate a strategy so that many different solutions on a
Pareto frontier can be obtained. Then the designer is able to choose an
appropriate controller parameter depending on the trade-off between
the various objectives and his specic requirement for the system. Thus
in the present paper, an evolutionary multi-objective optimization
algorithm, namely adaptive grid particle swarm optimization (AGPSO),
is used for generating a Pareto solutions set [18] for designing the PID
controller in the HTRS system. The design objectives are to improve the
transient performance of the hydro-power system, which is always
subjected to the severe frequency turbulences and load disturbances,
thus weakly damped oscillation and fast tracking ability are the key
factors in determining objectives. Two objective functions namely the
integral squared error value (ISE) and the integral of time-multiplied
squared error value (ITSE) are considered, in which the ISE-based
system always has a quick response and the ITSE-based system owns
little damp oscillations [19]. Moreover, a kind of the nonlinear HTRS
model with respect to the nonlinear-element-excited large uctuations
is elaborated in this study, where a hyperbolic-tangent function is used
to approximate the saturation function in the HTRS model, and
experimental results show that there presents a considerable similarity
between the real output and approximation output. Furthermore, a
fuzzy-based membership function value assignment is employed to
choose the best compromise solution from obtained Pareto set. Simulation results are presented and compared with some currently used
tuning techniques under various working circumstances to show the
effectiveness and robustness of the proposed AGPSO-based controller
approach.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 briey
reviews the nonlinear model of HTRS, and then the optimizing
problem of the HTRS model is formulated. In Section 3, the need for
multi-objective controller, contradictory objective functions, and fundamentals of multi-objective optimization is discussed in details. The
classical PSO algorithm and its variant multi-objective version AGPSO
approach are introduced in Section 4. Section 5 illustrates the general
structure of using AGPSO-based controller in solving the optimization
problem of the nonlinear HTRS model. The comparative experiments
are designed and the results are discussed in Section 6. The conclusion
is drawn in Section 7. Acknowledgments are given in the end.

penstock, wicket gate, water turbine with generator sets attached

and the draft tube [20]. Some plants with long penstocks may have
single or multiple surge tanks to reduce water hammer. The schematic of a hydropower plant is illustrated in Fig. 1.
From Fig. 1, we can see that water from the reservoir ows
through the penstock pipeline system and then is regulated by
means of guide wicket gates, which are always moved by an oil
hydraulic servomechanism controlled by turbine speed controller.
The controller acts when there is a mismatch between the torque
developed by turbine and the electrical demand on the synchronous
generator. HTRS, which is focused on the frequency control law
(active power control) among the given speed output r, controller
output u, servomechanism device output y, water turbine mechanical torque output mt and ow rate q, conduit output h, and
generator speed output x, has been widely studied in the past
decade [15,16,20,21]. In the ever literatures, the simulation models
of subsystem respect to linear handles are described. In this section,
a kind of nonlinear models of HTRS has been studied and models of
sections are illuminated respectively.
2.1. Model of turbine governor
At present, the classical PID is the most common form of
controller used in speed governing. The transfer function of PID
controller is
GPID s kp

ki
kd s
s

and the output of controller is shown as

us GPID s U rs xs

where kp , ki and kd are the proportional gain, integral gain, differential gain of PID controller. us, rs and xs are the Laplace transform of controller output u, given speed output r and synchronous
generator speed x.
There always exists a lower limit and upper limit for the
controller, which can signicantly reduce the mechanical wear
and tear of guide vane once there is a frequently adjustment of
turbine blades. This limitation can be simplied as a saturation
element in the system as follows:





um


u Nz
z z0

z  z0

3
2z0
where um is the upper bound output of controller, z0 is the corresponding maximum input of um .
2.2. Model of servomechanism
The electro-water servomechanism is the actuator of water
turbine. It is made up by the major servomotor and auxiliary
servomotor. Generally, the parameter of auxiliary servomotor is far
less than the parameter of major servomotor, thus the model can
be conducted as a one-order system
(
Gc s T y s1 1
4
ys Gc s U us
where T y is major servo time constant and ys is the Laplace
transform of servo output y.
2.3. Model of water turbine and penstock system

2. Models of the hydraulic turbine regulating system

Hydropower has been used by human beings for a long time and
plays an important role in global electricity generation market. A
complete hydropower plant usually consists of a mountain reservoir,

In HTRS, it usually considered water turbine and the penstock

pipeline as a whole. As ow rate is nonlinear to pressure, it is difcult
to describe movement laws of uid in the penstock. However,
neglecting plant parameter changes and water column elasticity
effect in the penstock, the transfer function of inelastic water hammer

Z. Chen et al. / ISA Transactions 56 (2015) 173187

175

Reservoir

Surge tank

Power Grid

Tunnel

Generator

Turbine
gate

Hydraulic
turbine

Penstock
Controller

Draft tube

q
r
+

Governor/
Controller

u Servomechannism

Guide
vane

Water
turbine

Conduit

mt
Generator

h
x

Fig. 1. Schematic of hydropower plant with its structures and components (a) general layout form and (b) block diagram form.

ex 0; eqx 0), the dynamic characters of turbine and penstock

system can be deduced in accordance with the Eqs. (5)(8) as

could be expressed as [21]

Gh s

hs
 Tws
qs

where hs and qs are the Laplace transform of effective water head

h and ow rate q, T w is the character constant in penstock which is
usually known as water response time constant.
The nonlinear characteristic of Francis-turbine is described by
two equations as follows:
mt f 1 x; y; h

q f 2 x; y; h

where the analytic expression of nonlinear functions f 1 U and

f 2 U are unknown, but for small variation around the steady-state
running conditions, the model of turbine is approximating a linear
model and deduced as [22]
(
mt ex x ey y eh h
8
q eqx x eqy y eqh h
(
where

eh mt =h; ex mt =x; ey mt =y
eqh q=h; eqx q=x; eqy q=y

and these six tra;nsfer coefcients can be obtained from the

moment and ow characteristic curves provide by turbine manufacturers. Considering the situation that generator unit in grid is
involved as a part of power distribution systems, in which the
turbine speed has little impact on torque mt and ow rate q (i.e.

 em T w s
Gt s ey 11
eqh T w s

mt s Gt s Uys

where em eqy eh =ey  eqh , mt s is the Laplace transform of turbine mechanical torque mt . The block diagram of Gt s is shown in
Fig. 2.

2.4. Model of a generator system

The synchronous generator model used in this section is the
well-known simplied rst-order transfer function [19]
Gg s

xs
1

mt s  mg s T a s en

10

where mg s is the Laplace transform of load torque mg , T a is the

inertia time constant of generator, en is the adjustment coefcient
of generator.
The transfer functions of HTRS are shown in Fig. 3. From Fig. 3, it
could be found that HTRS is a complicated system, where the linear
parts and the saturation nonlinearity exist simultaneous in the
turbine governor model. In this work, we will study this kind of
the nonlinear model of the HTRS system with unload and load
condition, respectively.

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Z. Chen et al. / ISA Transactions 56 (2015) 173187

various different and possibly conicting specications like robust

stability, disturbance attenuation, good tracking ability, etc. cannot
be only cast into a single norm and a multi-objective controller is
essential for assessing the system performance limits and analyzing the various trade-offs among the disparate design objectives.
A traditional approach for solving a multi-objective controller
problem is to translate it into a single-objective problem using
weighting factors to indicate the relative importance among
various objectives [24]. The solution obtained strongly depends
on which factor weight sets are used, and it is not usually a trivial
task to select the right weighting vector set to assure a quality
solution with a reasonable tradeoff among objectives. This situation may be more complicated when the saturation constraints of
the HTRS system are considered. A lot complex methods to tackle
these issues have been developed, such as goal programming
methods and physical programming [25].
Multi-objective optimization (MOO) can handle these issues in a
simple manner because of its parallel optimization approach. In
MOO, all the objectives and constraints are signicant from the view
of designers, and as a consequence, each is optimized to obtain a set
of optimal solutions. The MOO approach offers to the designer a set
of solutions, where all the solutions are the non-inferior. This series

3. Multi-objective optimization framework for controller

design in the HTRS system
3.1. The requirement for multi-objective optimization controller
design
The question of why multi-objective optimization is required
for controller designing problems is enunciated explicitly in
Herreros et al. [23], it states that the key concept of various
synthesis techniques, like H 2 , H 1 or L1 control is that the design
objective functions can be satised by minimizing a suitable
weighted norm of a closed-loop transfer function. However, each
norm has its own particular characteristic feature and only minimizing that norm to ensure that the control system satises that
criteria well, but it does not say anything about the other design
specications. For example, the H 2 norms are particularly suited for
closed-loop stabilization in the presence of disturbances, but the
resulting controllers may lack guaranteed robustness stability. The
H 1 norm or L1 norms on the other hand have been developed for
assessing closed-loop robust stability, but the former is a not easy
to include the constraints in the control and process variables
while the latter has a long computational time-cost. Consequently,

Fig. 2. The sub-block diagram of transfer functions Gt s.

Fig. 3. The frame diagram of transfer functions of the hydraulic turbine regulating system.

NS=[3.7,1.2]
7 A

NS: new solution

E
F

E
F

4
G

H
I

J
K

K
L

1
0

NS

L
M

0
0

Fig. 4. Graphical representation of a new element's insertion into the adaptive grid (lies within the current boundaries of the grid).

Z. Chen et al. / ISA Transactions 56 (2015) 173187

of alternative solutions offer the designer great exibility and the

role of the designer is turned to select the most preferable solution
in accordance with his/her needs and preferences for a particular
situation. For a practical HTRS system design problem, two main

objectives need to be considered in the controller's tuning procedure:

a fast response to the reference output and a gentle stability progress
for the HGU, hence the design tuning technique algorithm must be
capable of handling multiple objectives at the design phase itself.

NS: New Solution

NS=[6.2,0.42]
7 A

B
C

E
F

177

E
F

H
I

J
K

K
L

1
0

NS

Fig. 5. Graphical representation of a new element's insertion into the adaptive grid (lies out the current boundaries of the grid).

Fig. 6. The introduction of this special mutation operator (a) pseudo-code of the operator and (b) behavior of the operator.

178

Z. Chen et al. / ISA Transactions 56 (2015) 173187

3.2. Conicting objective functions

Denition 2. (Pareto optimal) For a given multi-objective problem,

a solution x1 A is the Pareto optimal if and only if

A major of micro-regulators are PID controller in the world. The

regulator in the HTRS system is not an exception. It is desirable to
shorten rise time and decrease damp oscillations simultaneously
with PID control power for the HTRS system, thus two different
objective functions respected to the rise time and damp oscillations
are considered for the optimization of PID controller. First is the
integral of squared error (ISE) (J 1 ) and second is the integral of time
multiplied squared error (ITSE) (J 2 ), which are dened as follows:
Z T
e2 tdt
11
J 1 ISE

: ( x2 A : x1 ! x2

Z
J 2 ITSE

te2 tdt

12

Denition 3. (Pareto-optimal set) The set P in the decision variable

space consisting of all Pareto optimality vectors


18
P x1 A j:( x2 A : x2 ! x1
Denition 4. (Pareto-optimal front) The plot of a set PF which
includes the values of all objective functions corresponding to the
solution in P.
n
o
19
PF Fx f 1 x; f 2 x; ; f m xT jx A P

where et is the error signal (i.e. et rt  xt), T is the time range

of simulation.
The rst objective function J 1 tries to ensure fast tracking of desired
set-point and the second objective function J 2 tries to die out the
oscillations with a heavy penalty to the squared errors of time
multiplication. Both J 1 and J 2 must be minimized for effective operation of control loop. It is well known that the lower value of ISE makes
the HTRS system to act faster. Also with increase in speed, the accuracy
becomes low, which implies there is prone to have oscillatory time
response. These damp oscillations or overshoot is characterized by the
presence of a higher ITSE value for the HTRS system and vice versa,
which means the relationship between ISE and ITSE is inversely
proportional. We hope the HTRS system have a smaller rise time and
littler damp oscillations, thus a multi-objective algorithm containing
these two objectives is needed for the optimal tuning of HTRS.
3.3. Fundamentals of multi-objective optimization
Generally, the MOO problems contain several objectives to be
minimized (or maximized) and (optional) constraints to be satised. In this case, optimization problems consist of optimizing a
vector of functions which differs from a single-objective optimization problem and shown as
Objective function : Opt Fx f 1 x;
Subject to : g i x r0
hj x 0

17

f 2 x;

f k x 

i 1; 2; ; p ;

j 1; 2; ; r;

p r m

4. Multi-objective particle swarm optimization

4.1. Overview of particle swarm optimization
Particle swarm optimization (PSO), rst proposed by Kennedy and
Eberhart [26], is one of the most widely used heuristic optimization
algorithms [2729]. As a population-based algorithm, PSO uses a pool
of individuals to perform the search process on the n-dimensional
decision space. Each individual (or particle) ith, which stands for a
potential solution of the optimization problem, has a position X i
xi;1 ; ; xi;d ; ; xi;n  and a ight velocity V i vi;1 ; ; vi;d ; ; vi;n . Moreover, the pools contains the personal's best position for each particle ith
found so far, Pbesti pbest i;1 ; ; pbest i;d ; ; pbest i;n  and a global
best particle position found among all the particles in the pools so far,
Gbest gbest 1 ; ; gbest d ; ; gbest n .
In essence, the trajectory of each particle is updated according
to its own ying experience and also according to that of the best

13
14
15

where x x1 ; x2 ; xn ; A is the feasible solution vector or decision variables, is the available domain of solutions, Fx is a
vector of objectives, f x is the objective function and gx and hx
are the constraint functions of problem, p and q are the number of
inequality constraint and equality constraint, respectively, m is the
total number of constraint functions.
These functions f 1 x; f 2 x; ; f k x, usually in conict with each
other, are a mathematical description of performance criteria.
There are few encounters that a vector of the decision variables
that optimizes all objectives simultaneously, thus the concept of
Pareto optimality associated with the trade-off between different
objectives is adopted [19]
T

Denition 1. (Pareto dominance) A vector x1 x11 ; x21 ; ; x1

n is
2
2
said to dominate the another vector x2 x2
1 ; x2 ; ; xn , note as
x1 ! x2 if and only if
8 i A f1; 2; ; kg; f i x1 r f i x2 4 ( i A f1; 2; ; mg; f i x1 o f i x2

16

Fig. 7. The pseudo-code of the AGPSO algorithm.

Z. Chen et al. / ISA Transactions 56 (2015) 173187

particle in the pool. The standard PSO can be described as follows:

8
< vti;d 1 vti;d c1 r 1 pbest ti;d xti;d c2 r 2 gbest td  xti;d
20
: xti;d 1 xti;d vti;d 1
where t is the current iteration, is the inertia weight that
represents the trend of ight, c1 and c2 are the learning factors
that control the impacts of cognitive and social components, r 1 and
r 2 are two uniform random number in the range [0 1], vti;d is the dth
dimension velocity of particle ith at iteration t, xti;d is the dth
dimension position of particle ith at iteration t, pbest ti;d is the dth
dimension of the historical best position of particle ith until
iteration t, gbest td is the dth dimension of the global best position
found by all individuals until iteration t.
Compared with other intelligence algorithms, PSO is characterized by conceptual simplicity and high efciency for the sake that
all the particles share information and collaborate with each other,
which enable the population to move toward the best solution
from different directions [28], thus it is amended to multi-objective
approach and applied to the tuning problem of the HTRS system.
4.2. Adaptive grid particle swarm optimization
In order to apply the PSO strategy to solve MOO problems, the
original scheme needs to be modied. When solving a singleobjective optimization target problem by the PSO approach, the
best particle of entire population (i.e. gbest) is used as a leader to
guide the particle's ight. However, in the case of MOO problems,

179

each particle might have a set of different leaders (each Pareto

optimality solution could be selected as a leader) of which only one
is selected in order to update its ight position, and for each
particle, one suit neighbor member which can give more cognitive
information would be chosen as pbesti. In the following parts, the
selection strategies of gbest and pbesti are described. Furthermore, to enhance the solution searching ability, a special mutation
operator is introduced.
4.2.1. The strategy to select the global best position
One leader should be selected as gbest in order to update the
position of particles. Hence the selection of particles' leaders is
focused on the enhancement of the convergence and diversity of
solutions. Here, a global best position selection technique which is
based on a special adaptive grid mechanism is described. The basic
idea of adaptive grid mechanism is to use an external archive to
store all the solutions that are non-dominated with respect to the
contents of the archive. Into the archive, objective function space is
divided into several regions as shown in Fig. 4. It is noted that if the
individual inserted into the archive lies outside the current bounds
of grid, then the grid will be recalculated and each individual
within it need to be relocated (see Fig. 5).
From Figs. 4 and 5, it is obvious that the archive space is separated
by a lot of adaptive grids. Each grid is interpreted as a geographical
region that contains no particles (i.e. candidate leader). These grids
are assigned a tness equal to the result of dividing , a positive
number termed with leader selection pressure parameter, by the
number of particles it contains. This aims to decrease the tness of

Fig. 8. The sketch comparison of saturation function and hyperbolic function.

8.3

x 104

25
20

Fitness assignment

8.2

15
10

8.1

5
8

0
-5

7.9

-10
-15

7.8

-20
7.7

10

20

30

40

50

60

-25
-50

-40

-30

-20

-10

10

Iteration
Fig. 9. The approximation result of saturation element and hyperbolic tangent element.

20

30

40

50

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Z. Chen et al. / ISA Transactions 56 (2015) 173187

those grids that contain more than one particle and it can be seen as a
form of tness sharing [30], and then we apply roulette-wheel
selection with these tness values to select the suitable grid. Once
the grid has been selected, from which we will take the particle
within it randomly. This chosen particle is the corresponding global
best position gbest as leader.

4.2.2. The strategy to select the personal best position

The personal guide is associated with cognition. By choosing a
proper technique to nd personal best position, the diversity will
be maintained. We use a randomized strategy to nd the personal
best position of the particle. When the particle completes its ight
and generates new offspring, the historical record of ith particle

Fig. 10. The owchart of the AGPSO-based hydraulic turbine regulating system parameter optimization.

Z. Chen et al. / ISA Transactions 56 (2015) 173187

(i.e. pbesti) is updated, and then randomized strategy is invoked.

The criterion of randomized strategy to select the personal's best
position is simply: if the offspring of ith particle is dominated by
his parent particle, the historical record kept unchanged; otherwise the offspring replaces his parent particle in memory; if
neither of them is dominated by the other, pbesti will be chosen
randomly within the parent and offspring.
4.2.3. The mutation operator
In the basic PSO, each particle ith ies to its personal best
position pbesti and the global position gbest. With increasing of
generations, particles become similar to pbesti and gbest. It means
that pbesti  ith and gbest  ith become small. Once these best
particle positions get stuck in local optima, all particles in the
current swarm will quickly converge and tracking in the local
optima [31]. In order to avoid this phenomenon, a non-uniform
mutation operator is used here [18]. The pseudo-code of this
operator is shown in Fig. 6(a) and the number of particles that
are affected by the special operator with respect to the current
iteration is described by Fig. 6(b).
From Fig. 6(b), it is seen that at the beginning of search process,
the mutation operator covers the full search range of each design
variable and rapidly narrow the range covered with the number of
iterations increases, which leads to a result that highly explorative
behavior is produced in initial stage of the hybrid algorithm and
then decreased this effect over time.
4.2.4. The management of external archive
The main goals of multi-objective evolutionary algorithm
approaches are to reach closer to the set of the Pareto-optimal
solutions (i.e. better convergence) and get a series of diversied
solutions (i.e. spread diversity), and the research on the Paretobased is primarily aimed at the simultaneous improvement of
these two directions. Better convergence and spread diversity can

181

be achieved by a proper management of external archive. Herein,

an update procedure with respect to the adjustment grids is used
to manage the inserting solutions in the external archive.
As mentioned in Section 4.2.1, the known search space explored
so far in the external archive is separated by a lot of grids and the
particles that are non-dominated are located by these grids as an
orthogonal coordinate system, where each particle's coordinates
are dened in accordance with the values of its objective functions.
The contents of the archive are updated in each generation with
the geographical representation of the particles within the grids.
This update consists of inserting all currently non-dominated locations into the archive. Any dominated locations from the archive
are removed in the process. Since the size of the archive set is
limited, whenever it gets full, those particles located in less dense
areas of the objective space are given the priority over those lying
in high dense areas. The more number of particles in a grid, the
bigger pruning probability there is.
4.2.5. The setting out of the algorithm
In this study, a multi-objective PSO augmenting its performance
by utilizing the aforementioned strategies is introduced. The general
setting out of this algorithm is described as follows. Initially, the
position and the velocity of particles should be randomly generated.
Then after calculating the tness values of all particles, the archive
set based on the concept of optimal-Pareto is formed. The global
best position and personal's best position are determined with the
strategies above and the particles will be enhanced by Eq. (20). To
improve the diversity of the particles, a special mutation operation
is conducted for all particles. The personal's best position is updated
at the end of each generation and follows with the update of the
archive. This cycle is repeated until the user-dened criterion is
satised. The pseudo-code of this method is shown in Fig. 7.

5. Application of AGPSO into the HTRS system

5.1. Handles to the saturation element in HTRS system

Table 1
Parameters in the hydraulic turbine regulating system.
Ty

Ta

Tw

ey

eqy

eh

eqh

en

0.3

5.72

0.83

1.40

1.23

0.35

0.15

0.45

As there is saturation element existent, the output of the

controller is not smoothly (see Fig. 8(a)) and the most common
used nonlinear handle measure, i.e. a describing function method
(DFM), is rstly considered to the frequency analysis of dynamic

Table 2
Comparison of obtained Pareto-front solutions under unload condition in trials.
Trials

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

QM (%)

SM

DM

AGPSO

NSGAII

SPEAII

AGPSO

NSGAII

SPEAII

AGPSO

NSGAII

SPEAII

75.6757
60.8696
43.4783
38.5965
42.7083
69.0476
30.7087
32.0000
37.3626
27.8261
37.2727
56.9892
57.1429
51.0000
36.1345
45.7944
39.7959
40.6250
39.1667
33.3333

0
32.6087
50.4348
37.7193
57.2917
0
43.3071
39.2000
62.6374
46.9565
47.2727
9.67742
29.5918
48.0000
35.2941
26.1682
28.5714
50.0000
38.3333
47.6190

24.3243
6.52174
6.08696
23.6842
0
30.9524
25.9843
28.8000
0
25.2174
15.4545
33.3333
13.2653
1.00000
28.5714
28.0374
31.6327
9.37500
22.5000
19.0476

0.6526
0.6501
0.7345
0.6359
0.6617
0.6796
0.8081
0.7063
0.5729
0.6569
0.4839
0.7387
0.5528
0.6081
0.6601
0.5752
0.6710
0.7355
0.6291
0.5597

0.7568
0.4224
0.4094
0.3444
0.4246
0.6979
0.5542
0.3419
0.3605
0.3805
0.3573
1.7460
0.8621
0.4321
0.2881
0.4446
0.4963
0.3498
0.3672
0.4215

1.0983
1.4194
1.2471
0.9004
1.5583
1.2893
1.1299
1.2940
1.4144
1.1965
1.1277
1.1160
1.2316
1.3552
1.0283
1.3277
0.8224
1.1257
1.2128
1.1939

4.2321
4.2037
4.2806
4.3705
4.6034
4.4517
4.2064
4.3068
4.3193
4.3128
4.2629
4.6003
4.3198
4.2056
4.5107
4.3421
4.3911
4.2577
4.2948
4.1534

1.8072
2.4402
1.9568
2.9418
2.5481
2.1953
3.0093
3.2320
3.7060
3.1772
3.4611
1.3125
2.3923
2.5894
3.3564
2.8030
2.3248
3.0276
2.3346
2.7736

3.3532
3.7644
4.4100
2.3833
3.6747
4.0695
3.5543
4.0469
4.2644
4.3626
3.8157
3.4498
3.8559
3.7058
3.4473
4.2607
3.0476
4.2271
2.3954
4.3099

182

Z. Chen et al. / ISA Transactions 56 (2015) 173187

behavior in the HTRS system. However, DFM only can works on the
control system that the linear parts and nonlinear parts are easy to
decoupled, which is not suitable for the close-coupled nonlinear
HTRS system, thus in this work, a hyperbolic approximation with
respect to tangent function is applied in the HTRS system. The
formulation of proposed hyperbolic approximation is described as
follows:
z
u an tan h
21
b
and once there are proper values setting of parameter a and b, the
output of hyperbolic function (dotted line) is nearly the same as
the output of saturation function (solid line), which is shown in
Fig. 8(b). In this study, we set um 20; z0 20, and the parameter
chosen of a and b has been computed by the PSO approach. The
bound of input signal is set as [  50 50], and simulation step is
assigned to 0.001, the tness function is set as the error between
approximation output and reference output (i.e.f itnessi jci 
zij, where ci is the approximation output, and zi is the saturation output). Experiment result shows that while the parameter
set a; b is assigned as 20:435; 16:104, the tness function gets
the smallest value. The iteration convergence process and nal
comparison of approximation output and saturation output are
shown in Fig. 9.
5.2. The dynamic analysis of the HTRS system
The block diagram of the HTRS system is illustrated in Fig. 3,
and the function of each component in Fig. 3 has been discussed in
details with Eqs. (1)(10). From Fig. 3, it can be seen that there are
two different input ports (i.e. given speed input and load torque
input) of this system, which means there should be discussed with
unload running condition and load running condition.
5.2.1. Unload running condition
In this case, there is no load turbulence interrupted the HTRS
and only given speed input acts on this system. The whole transfer
13.8
AGPSO

NSGAII

SPEAII

13.75

1.4
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
SF
Z-N
IMC
AGPSO

0
-0.2

10

12

14

16

18

20

Fig. 12. The generator speed output of the hydraulic turbine regulating system
under unload condition.

Table 4
Time domain specializations of traditional tuning methods under unload condition.
Specializations

SF

ZN

IMC

Er
Tr (s)
Mp (%)

0
0.4086
31.2821

0
0.4400
21.9150

0
0.3723
33.8184

function of the turbine system (i.e. Gt s, including water turbine

and penstock system) and the generator system (i.e. Gg s, including generator sets) is deduced as
Gs Gt s UGg s ey

1  em T w s
1
U
1 eqh T w s T a s en

22

and the state-equations of it can be described as

(

13.7

x_ 1 x2 b1 y
x_ 2  a0 x1  a1 x2 b0  a1 b1 y

23

J2/ITSE

13.65

where
x1 x; a0 en =eqh T w T a ; a1 T a en eqh T w =eqh T w T a ; b0 ey =eqh
T w T a ; b1  ey em =eqh T a , and the state-equation of the servomechanism (i.e. Gc s) can be deduced as

13.6
13.55
13.5

x_ 3

13.45
13.4
13.35
50.3

50.35

50.4

50.45

50.5

50.55

50.6

J1/ISE
Fig. 11. Comparison of Pareto fronts of J1 and J2 under unload condition.

Table 3
Results of multi-objective algorithms with best compromise solution under unload
condition.
Method

kp

ki

kd

Er

Tr (s)

Mp (%)

AGPSO
NSGAII
SPEAII

18.8777
18.1032
18.6882

0.4460
0.4516
0.4529

5.8563
5.5566
5.8054

0
0
0

0.3427
0.3503
0.3449

5.9450
5.9958
6.0218

1
u  x3
Ty

24

where x3 y, and u Nz is the output of saturation element.

Based on the nonlinear handles proposed in Section 5.1, Eq. (24) is
educed as
x_ 3

z

1
 x3
an tan h
Ty
b

25

where
R
z kp ki =s kd sr  x1 kp r  x1 ki r  x1 dt kd r_  x_ 1 , as
R
sume x4 r x1 dt, while the given speed output is a constant,
we can get
(

x_ 4 r  x1
z kp r  x1 ki x4 kd x2 b1 x3

26

Z. Chen et al. / ISA Transactions 56 (2015) 173187

Based on the above discussion, the state equations under

unload condition is summarized as
8_
x1 x2 b1 x3
>
>
>_
>
< x2  a0 x1  a1 x2 b0  a1 b1 x3




27
k r  x1 ki x4  kd x2 b1 x3
 x3
x_ 3 T1y a tan h p
>
>
b
>
>
:
x_ 4 r  x1

5.2.2. Load running condition

In this case, load turbulence and the given speed input interrupted HTRS at the same time. The transfer function of the turbine
system and the generator system (including synchronous generator set and load rejection devices) is educed as
Gs Gt s  mg  U Gg s

ey  mg  mg eqh eey T w s
1 eqh T w sT a s en

28

Similar to Section 5.2.1, the state equation set of the HTRS

system under load running condition is summarized as follows:
8
x_ 1 x2 b3 x3
>
>
>
>
< x_ 2  a2 x1  a3 x2 b2  a3 b3 x3
29
k r  x1 ki x4  kd x2 b1 x3
x3
x_ 3 T1y a tan h p
>
>
b
>
>
:_
x4 r  x1
where a2 en =eqh T w T a ; a3 T a en eqh T w =eqh T w T a ; b2 ey  mg =eqh
T w T a ; b3  mg eqh ey em =eqh T a , and the state variables, i.e. x1 ; x2 ;
x3 ; x4 is the same as Eq. (25). While mg 0, Eq. (29) is deduced to
be equal Eq. (27).
5.3. Optimal tuning strategy of PID gains
The optimal strategy of PID gains for the nonlinear HTRS system
is shown in Fig. 9. It is seen that the main bridge between the AGPSO
approach and the HTRS system is the particles (i.e. PID gains set) and
tness values. Once the position of a particle is assigned to the PID
gains in the nonlinear model, and the original data in a hydropower
electrical station is adopted, Eq. (29) or Eq. (27) becomes a known
canonical system of differential equations. Then after gets the initial
value of state variables, it is easy to solve these differential equations
by the RungeKutta method. It need to point out that the state
variable x1 x, which corresponds the synchronous generator set

183

speed. By means of computing the error signal of generator speed

output x and the desired speed output r, we can evaluate the
performance indicators ISE and ITSE simply. These two objective
functions are then transport to the given particle as a tness vector
set, which stimulates evolution search process moving forward as
shown in Fig. 10. The iteration counter is continuous incremented
with the update of archive population in each generation. While it is
equal to the predened maximum generation, the entire iterative
process is stopped and the results of non-dominated solutions are
printed to the designer, which are the optimal solutions that AGPSObased controller found for the nonlinear HTRS system.
5.4. Best compromise solution
The notion of Pareto-optimal is only the rst step towards solving
a MOO problem. The choice of suitable compromise solution selection from all the non-dominated alternatives is not only problem
dependent but also on the preference of decision maker. Thus, the
nal solution to the target problem is the result of both an
optimization process and a decision process. In order to choose the
optimal controller parameters from the obtained Pareto front set, a
fuzzy-based approach is employed in the paper. The jth objective
function of a non-dominated solution in the Pareto optimal front set
f j is represented by a membership function j dened as [32]

max
f j f j
max
min
f j f j
max

30
min

where f j
and f j are the maximum and minimum values of the
jth objective function.
For each solution ith, the membership function i is calculated
as

nj 1 ij

31

n
i
m
i 1 j 1 j

where n is the number of objective functions and m is the number

of solutions. The solution having the maximum value of i is the
best compromise solution, i.e.
best_compromise_solution

max

j A f1;2;;mg

32

As a matter of fact, arranging all solutions in optimal-Pareto set

in descending order according to their membership function will

Table 5
Comparison of obtained Pareto-front solutions under load condition in trials.
Trials

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

QM (%)

SM

DM

AGPSO

NSGAII

SPEAII

AGPSO

NSGAII

SPEAII

AGPSO

NSGAII

SPEAII

54.5455
36.2205
38.0952
29.1339
35.0000
27.7778
42.0168
57.6087
57.5758
43.4783
29.5455
24.2188
38.4620
41.2706
37.0370
56.2500
34.8148
40.6504
36.0902
27.7311

0
40.1575
36.5079
41.7323
32.5000
46.0317
16.8067
0
0
29.5652
40.9091
45.3125
36.3640
39.6831
35.5556
0
41.4815
29.2683
30.0752
37.8151

45.4545
23.6220
25.3968
29.1339
32.5000
27.7778
41.1765
42.3913
42.4242
26.9565
29.5455
30.4688
25.1940
19.0473
27.4074
43.7500
23.7037
30.0813
33.8346
34.4538

0.6883
0.6148
0.5611
0.6356
0.6806
0.6505
0.7218
0.6730
0.6695
0.6793
0.6591
0.5645
0.6623
0.6361
0.6734
0.5831
0.6332
0.6295
0.7102
0.6776

0.3443
0.4889
0.4933
0.5862
0.4382
0.5698
0.5333
0.5483
0.3888
0.4174
0.4220
0.4102
0.4412
0.4869
0.4033
0.4706
0.3571
0.5205
0.4115
0.3919

0.3261
0.2908
0.2809
0.2788
0.2717
0.2861
0.3413
0.3586
0.3514
0.5850
0.2188
0.2697
0.4816
0.3033
0.3008
0.3496
0.2776
0.2301
0.2571
0.2417

14.6178
14.0370
13.9877
14.4205
14.7086
14.4817
14.5309
14.2259
14.7804
14.5669
14.5919
14.0495
14.5618
14.4389
14.5353
14.3495
14.6938
14.4592
14.4975
14.3953

14.7009
13.7359
13.8902
14.2093
13.2332
13.3163
14.4170
14.1911
14.4022
11.3948
12.4577
11.8552
14.1425
13.4409
13.2076
15.0797
12.2674
12.5026
13.0672
13.4058

14.0921
14.1380
14.2516
14.2602
14.2911
13.9937
14.0070
13.6536
14.1777
14.3665
14.1264
14.1261
14.3860
14.3426
14.3569
14.1030
14.1005
14.0032
14.1955
14.1359

184

Z. Chen et al. / ISA Transactions 56 (2015) 173187

provide the decision maker with a priority list of non-dominated

solutions. This will guide the decision maker in view of the current
operating conditions.

1.5

6. Experiment and result analysis

In this section, the HTRS is simulated in MATLAB, and the
proposed AGPSO approach is applied to the optimal tuning of PID
gains for the simulated system. The model of HTRS is illustrated in
Fig. 3. The performance of the proposed approach will be veried
throughout the later optimal experiments.
In experiments, simulation model of the HTRS system is excited
with two running conditions, i.e. unload condition and load
condition. Under unload condition, a step of the given speed input
is employed to excite this system and under load condition, a step
of given speed input, augmented with a step of load turbulence, is
employed to excite this system. The parameters of simulation
model are given in Table 1.
The lower bound and upper bound of three key estimated
parameters kp , ki and kd in the PID controller are all set as [020] and
the simulation time T is set as 20 s, Another two well-known MOO
algorithms, namely NSGAII and SPEAII are also used to optimize
this nonlinear system. All the numerical examples were tested on a
personal computer with Intel Core i5, 2.5 GHz processor and 4 GB
memory. A brief discussion of NSGAII and SPEAII are presented in
the following part which foregoes the experimental results.
i) Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm II (NSGAII): This algorithm is proposed by Deb et al. [33], which is an enhanced
version of NSGA and made signicant improvements by (i) using
a more efcient non-domination sorting scheme; (ii) eliminating
the sharing parameter; (iii) adding an elitist selection method

116.5
AGPSO

NSGAII

SPEAII

116
115.5

J2/ITSE

115
114.5
114
113.5
113
112.5

6
18

2.

2
18

2.

2.

2
18

18

1.

1.

18

4
1.

18

2
18

1.
18

18

18

0.

112

J1/ISE
Fig. 13. Comparison of Pareto fronts of J1 and J2 under load condition.

Table 6
Results of multi-objective algorithms with best compromise solution under load
condition.
Method

kp

ki

kd

Er

Tr (s)

Mp (%)

AGPSO
NSGAII
SPEAII

10.7298
10.6731
10.6985

0.5047
0.4987
0.4924

4.7957
4.7935
4.7709

0
0
0

1.6501
1.6513
1.6548

1.0800
1.3770
1.2225

0.5

-0.5

SF
Z-N
IMC
AGPSO

10

12

14

16

18

20

Fig. 14. The generator output of the hydraulic turbine regulating system under load
condition.

Table 7
Time domain specializations of traditional tuning methods under load condition.
Specializations

SF

ZN

IMC

Er
Tr (s)
Mp (%)

0.0084
0.5286
47.5143

0
0.6016
42.4235

0
0.7727
12.9541

that greatly aids in capturing Pareto surfaces. The NSGAII was

chosen in this study because it has been successfully employed in
controllers for other industrial system [32,34].
ii) Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithm II (SPEAII): This algorithm
is proposed by Zitzler et al. [35], which is an extension of SPEA
improving in the following aspects: (i) the strength value Si
is calculated for all solutions i A P t [ P t' ; where P t is the
population at t generation and P t ' is the archive at tgeneration;
(ii) only archive members participate to reproduction; (iii) a
truncation method is used to control the xed archive size.
SPEAII has been used in many engineer applications signicantly [36,37], which demonstrates the practicability and effectiveness of this algorithm.
In simulation, to perform fair comparison in tness evaluation,
the population size of AGPSO, NSGAII and SPEAII are all 60. The
maximum generation is set to be 50 in three algorithms. Other
assumptions of three algorithms are described as follows:
(1) AGPSO assumptions
 The values of c1 and c2 are all set to 2 and the value of w is
set to 0.6.
 The grid size is assigned to 10, from an intensive preliminary test phase on the ratio between the performance and
computational time.
 The leader selection pressure parameter is set to 4.
 The mutation rate mutrate is xed to 0.05.
 The size of external archive set is set to 60.
(2) NSGAII and SPEAII assumptions
 The initial population is randomly generated.
 The binary tournament selection procedure is used.
 The selection rate is set to 1.
 The order crossover (OX) and inversion (IN) are used as
crossover and mutation operators.
 The ratios of OX and IN are set to 0.8 and 0.3, respectively.
 The size of external archive set is set to 60.

Z. Chen et al. / ISA Transactions 56 (2015) 173187

185

1.2

1.2

0.8
Turbine speed

Turbine speed

0.8
0.6
0.4

0.6
0.4
0.2
0

0.2

Ta=5.53

Ta=5.53

-0.2

Ta=5.73
Ta=5.93

Ta=5.73
Ta=5.93

-0.4

Ta=6.13

-0.2

10

12

14

16

18

-0.6

20

Ta=6.13

Time

10

12

14

16

18

20

Time
1.2

1.2

0.8
Turbine speed

Turbine speed

0.8
0.6
0.4

0.6
0.4
0.2
0

0.2

en=0.42

en=0.48

10

12

14

16

18

en=0.45
en=0.48

-0.4

en=0.50

en=0.50

-0.2

en=0.42

-0.2

en=0.45

-0.6

20

Time

10

12

14

16

18

20

Time
1.2

1.2

1
1
0.8
Turbine speed

Turbine speed

0.8
0.6
0.4

0.6
0.4
0.2
0

0.2

Tw=0.81

Tw=0.85

10

12

14

16

18

Tw=0.83
Tw=0.85

-0.4

Tw=0.88

Tw=0.88

-0.2

Tw=0.81

-0.2

Tw=0.83

20

-0.6

Time

10

12

14

16

18

20

Time

Fig. 15. Robustness analysis of obtained best compromise solution for AGPSO-based controller.

To validate the reliability of the proposed AGPSO approach

quantitatively, the following three comparison metrics were
taken into account [38]:
(i) Quality Metric (QM): This metric is simply measured by putting
together the non-dominated solutions found by the algorithms
and the ratios between the non-dominated solutions are reported.
(ii) Spacing Metric (SM): This metric is dened as follows:




N  1
dmean di

s i1
33
N 1ndmean

where di is the Euclidean distance between consecutive solutions in the obtained non-dominated set of solutions, and dmean
is the average of these distance. This metric allows us to
measure the uniformity of the spread of the points of the solution set.
(iii) Diversication Metric (DM): This metric measures the spread of
the obtained Pareto-front solution set and is dened by
D

q
i
i
N
i 1 maxxt  yt

34

186

Z. Chen et al. / ISA Transactions 56 (2015) 173187

where J xit  yit J is the Euclidean distance between the nondominated solution xit and the non- dominated solution yit .

6.1. Comparison of optimal tuning methods under unload condition

In this part of experiments, AGPSO, SPEAII and NSGAII have
been employed to tune the PID gains in the dynamic model of the
HTRS system as described in Fig. 3. A step increase of given speed
input is applied to this HTRS model. In order to overcome the
randomness of heuristic algorithms, 20 trials are repeated, from
different initial populations in succession and the results considering QM, SM and DM in trials are listed in Table 2.
In Table 2, it is obvious that, compared with SPEAII and NSGAII,
AGPSO performs better with high quality and widely distribution.
Although, in some trials, the QM of NSGAII is slightly better than
that of AGPSO, AGPSO achieves the best performance in terms of
overall indices. Furthermore, in those trials, the SM and DM of
NSGAII are smaller, which implies the diversity of the population is
scarcely and alternative solutions are in a narrow range (see Fig. 11).
Fig. 11 shows the obtained Pareto front in multi-objective
algorithms. It is clearly that the Pareto solutions obtained by
AGPSO is totally inside the concave portion of NSGAII and SPEAII,
which means the solutions found by AGPSO is more desirable than
that found by NSGAII and SPEAII.
Table 3 lists the obtained optimal controller parameters of three
algorithms by adopting the mean best compromise solution and
correspond time domain indexes (i.e. steady-state error Er, rise
time Tr, overshoot level Mp) with respect to the nal generator
speed output. It is found that the result obtained by the AGPSO
optimization controller outperforms than other two kind controllers, which presents a shorter rise time and small overshoot percentage for the nonlinear HTRS system.
Fig. 12 shows the parameters of the nonlinear HTRS system. The
PID gains are set as the average best compromise solutions found
by the AGPSO approach, which is listed in Table 3. In order to
reect the merits of proposed approach, three common optimal
tuning techniques of PID controller, which are termed with singular frequency based design tuning method (SF), ZieglerNichols
closed loop design (ZN) and internal model control design optimization (IMC) [10] are used in the HTRS system as a comparison. It is
seen that the PID controller signicantly improves the damping of
the subsequent power swings. The correspond results for the
closed loop HTRS system are presented in Table 4, where results
show that compared with SF based controller, ZN based controller
and IMC based controller, the AGPSO based controller has a lower
peak overshoot and lower rise time.

Fig. 13 shows the non-dominated solution found by different

algorithms. It is clear that the Pareto front obtained by the AGPSO
algorithm is widely and well spread while the front of NSGAII leads
to a false Pareto-front and the front of SPEAII is in a small range.
The optimal controller parameters with respect to the found
best compromise solution under load condition are shown in
Table 6, where some performance indexes are compared. It is seen
that the rise time value Tr and overshoot level Mp obtained by
AGPSO optimized controller is smaller than that values obtained by
the other multi-objective approach controllers, which means the
proposed AGPSO-based controller approach works effectively for
the HTRS system under load condition.
Fig. 14 exhibits the transient process of this HTRS system by using
the mean best compromise solution of the AGPSO approach and other
three common used approaches. Obviously, from this gure, it is seen
that with the action of controller, the small hydraulic transient damps
are died out soon and then pinned at a steady point as desired. Table 7
lists the time domain specializations of three traditional tuning
techniques. It is seen that compared with the AGPSO approach, three
traditional tuning techniques have a smaller improvement in the rise
time at the expense of a higher overshoot. Generally, a lower overshoot is preferred choice for the better performance of the HTRS
system [10], thereby we can justify the AGPSO based controller is
more suitable for the HTRS system.
6.3. Robustness analysis of the obtained solutions
In the previous experiments, we have discussed the AGPSObased controller designed for the nominal operating conditions. In
this part experiments, we will test the effectiveness of tuned
controller working for other operating conditions, i.e. the robustness ability to change in system parameters. To illustrate the effect
of the variation in system parameters on the obtained solution, the
gain and time constant of the generator, and the water response
time constant of turbine are varied. The variations in the generator
transfer function are due to the load changes which occur frequently in the system, which brings a uctuation of water response
time constant of turbine, and the controller must be capable of
handling these circumstances. Hence in the present study only
these three variations are considered for the robustness analysis of
obtained solutions.
Fig. 15 shows the robustness analysis for the best compromise
solution of controllers. It can be seen that no matter how decrease or
increase of system parameters, the AGPSO-based controller is capable
of tolerating these changes for the best compromise solution. As the
robustness of the other solutions on the Pareto front have similar
characteristics [17], it is clear that all the obtained solutions show
sufcient robustness to the parameter variation of the HTRS system
under the unload running condition and load running condition.

6.2. Comparison of optimal tuning methods under load condition

In order to assess the effectiveness and robustness of AGPSObased controller, different running conditions of the HTRS system is
taken care. A step increase of given speed input, augmented with a
step of load turbulence is employed to excite the system. The parameters respect to the HTRS system is not changed and the arguments
of three algorithms also keep unchanged. Tuning experiments are
repeated 20 times, and comparison metrics are considered.
Table 5 shows the optimum results obtained by various MOO
algorithms, where multi-objective metrics are listed. It is evident
that AGPSO-based approach achieves the best performance of all
the indices, which conrms that AGPSO has an excellent convergence character for the HTRS system under load condition. It is
noted that the main reason of smaller SM metric for NSGAII is the
premature phenomenon, which is intuitively presented in the
graphical results (see Fig. 13).

7. Conclusion
In this paper, an ingenious multi-objective adaptive grid particle
swarm optimization (AGPSO) technique is applied to tune the PID
gains in a nonlinear HTRS system. Different conicting goals like
the integral of squared error (ISE) and the integral of time multiplied squared error (ITSE) are chosen as objectives and the AGPSObased approach is employed to generate the Pareto optimal set
of solutions. This proposed approach is used in the HTRS system
under unload and load condition respectively, in which the superiority of AGPSO optimized controller is shown by comparing
different multi-objective measurements with NSGAII optimized
controller and SPEAII optimized controller. Furthermore, a best
compromise solution approach, which selected a suitable solution
from the obtained Pareto front by a fuzzy-based membership value

Z. Chen et al. / ISA Transactions 56 (2015) 173187

assignment, is used in the HTRS system, where experimental

results show that compared with traditional tuning methods, the
nonlinear model assisted with the AGPSO optimized controller has
a more desirable output.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51379080) and Hubei Key Laboratory of Cascaded
Hydropower Stations Operation & Control in China Three Gorges
University (No. 2013KJX02).
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