Tuning of PID Controller in PLC-Based Automatic Voltage Regulator System Using Adaptive Artificial Bee Colony–Fuzzy Logic Algorithm

The voltage control of synchronous generators, particularly under varying load conditions, remains a significant and complex challenge in the field of engineering. Although various control methods have been implemented for automatic voltage regulator (AVR) systems to control the terminal voltage of synchronous generators, the PID-based control method continues to be one of the most basic and widely used approaches. Determining the optimal values for the Kp, Ki, and Kd values is essential to ensuring efficient and rapid performance in a PID controller. This study presents PLC-based PID controller tuning using an adaptive artificial bee colony–fuzzy logic (aABC-FL) approach for voltage control in a micro-hydro power plant installed as an experimental setup. The real-time control and monitoring of the system was conducted using an S7-1200 programmable logic controller (PLC) integrated with a totally integrated automation (TIA) portal interface and a SCADA screen. The aABC-Fuzzy design was developed using the MATLAB/Simulink platform, with PLC-MATLAB communication established through OPC UA and the KEPServerEX interface. The results obtained from experiments conducted under different load conditions showed that the proposed aABC-FL PID significantly minimized settling time and overshoot compared to the classical PLC-PID. Additionally, the proposed method not only provided a good dynamic response but also proved to be robust and reliable for real physical AVR systems.