Improvement of Performance and Quality of Power in Grid Tied SOFC through Crow Search Optimization Technique

In this manuscript, a grid-connected Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) system has been considered. SOFC has numerous benefits in comparison to other available Fuel Cells (FCs) as it possesses longer stability, flexibility in fuel use, negligible harmful emissions, excellent dynamic characteristics, and comparatively very less cost. Conventional PID controller being a nonlinear controller fails to potentially respond to the nonlinearities of a power system network. Intending to dynamically tune the PID controller parameter a robust Crow Search (CS) based evolutionary technique has been suggested in this paper. The system is developed in the MATLAB/Simulink architecture and the efficiency of the proposed control approach is verified by adding it to a nonlinear load for some time interval. To confirm power quality enhancement stability analysis through Total Harmonics Distortion (THD) has been carried and the value obtained for the technique suggested is well within the IEEE range. Further, a comparative study of SOFC with classical PID and Crow Search tuned PID has been done considering various characteristics such as SOFC voltage, SOFC active power, SOFC reactive power, grid voltage and grid current.