Self-tuning control of thermal power plants

The application of an on-line self-tunina control algorithm based on a minimum variance strategy to thermal power plants is considered. In thermal power plants it is required to maintain the pressure of the steam turbine within certain limits while supplying the demanded power as fast as possible upon request. Basically, two control loops are involved in order to satisfy these conditions. Simulation of a thermal power plant is used to demonstrate the qualitative aspects of the suggested control scheme. The integrals of the squared error of both the boiler steam pressure and the turbine generated power are used to measure the effectiveness of this control scheme. The test results clearly indicate the advantages of the new self-tuningh controller over the conventional PI controller. The proposed self-tuning algorithm is simple and can be easily implemented locally on a microprocessor.