In this paper, design of fractional order
proportional-integral-derivative (FOPID) controllers in
nonlinear multi-area interconnected systems, is presented. A
three-area test system is considered to carry out this study.
Typically, each turbine has limited generation rate constrain
(GRC), while nonlinear performance of governor is described
by its dead band (DB). Time delays imposed by signal
telemetry are considered as well. Mayfly optimization
algorithm (MOA) is proposed to compute the optimum
parameters of FOPIDs, while minimizing a time domain based
objective function. The system time response stimulated by
step-load perturbation (SLP) is quantized using common ITAE
index. The proposed design is compared to other designs
optimized using different intelligent algorithms where the
superiority of the proposed is emphasized. Robustness test
based on Hermite-Biehler theorem showed that system is stable
subject to parametric-uncertainties.