Optimal tuning of proportional integral controller for fixed-speed wind turbine using grey wolf optimizer

The need for tuning the PI controller is to improve its performance metrics such as rise time, settling time and overshoot. This paper proposed the Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO) tuning method of a Proportional Integral (PI) controller for fixed speed Wind Turbine. The objective is to overcome the limitations in using the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Genetic Algorithm (GA) tuning methods for tuning the PI controller, such as quick convergence occurring too soon into a local optimum, and overshoot of the controller step input response. The GWO, the PSO, and the GA tuning methods were implemented in the Matlab 2016b to search the optimal gains of the Proportional and Integral controller through minimization of the objective function. A comparison was made between the results obtained using the GWO tuning method against PSO and GA tuning techniques. The GWO computed the smallest value of the minimized objective function. It exhibited faster convergence and better time response specification compared to other two methods. These and more performance indicators show the superiority of the GWO tuning method.