An advanced metaheuristic algorithm-based control technique for frequency regulation of grid-connected PV system

• PV/BSS with VSGs enhance grid resilience by mitigating inertia issues. • Implement FOPID to regulate grid frequency, leverage power and frequency measurements. • Proposed model outperforms traditional models lead to better efficiency. The increasing penetration of renewable energy sources, particularly inverter-based photovoltaic systems, reduces system inertia and leads to significant frequency stability challenges in modern power grids. Virtual synchronous generators (VSGs) have emerged as a promising solution to mitigate frequency deviations caused by the integration of photovoltaic systems. By emulating the inertial characteristics of conventional synchronous generators, VSGs contribute to improved grid stability. This research aims to enhance frequency response and stability of Photovoltaic (PV) systems integrated with battery storage by optimizing the FOPID controller parameters in virtual synchronous generators (VSGs) using the Adaptive Zebra Optimization Algorithm. Further, to optimize the FOPID controller parameters in the VSG, an Adaptive Zebra Optimization Algorithm (AZOA) is utilized. By enabling faster convergence to the maximum power point, this approach ensures optimal energy extraction from the PV system, thereby enhancing both its efficiency and reliability. The simulation results demonstrate significant improvements in system performance and effectiveness. At the 20th iteration, the proposed AZOA converges more rapidly, which shows the improvements of 22.04% and 2.96% compared to GA and ZOA, respectively. In terms of accuracy, the proposed method achieves a significantly lower MAE of 0.0095, which outperforms PID (0.0487), SVM (0.0501) and ANN (0.0493). These results correspond to improvements of 80.49% over PID, 81.03% over SVM, and 80.73% over ANN. The proposed AZOA-based VSG control approach improves dynamic performance, accelerates maximum power point convergence, and enhances energy extraction, offering a robust and effective solution for stabilizing grid-connected PV system.