Improved gravitational search algorithm for parameter identication

of water turbine regulation system

Zhihuan Chen, Xiaohui Yuan

, Hao Tian, Bin Ji

School of Hydropower and Information Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 430074 Wuhan, China
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 10 June 2013
Accepted 23 October 2013
Available online 21 November 2013
Keywords:
Water turbine regulation system
Parameter identication
Gravitational search algorithm
Particle swarm optimization
Chaotic mutation
a b s t r a c t
Parameter identication of water turbine regulation system (WTRS) is crucial in precise modeling hydro-
power generating unit (HGU) and provides support for the adaptive control and stability analysis of
power system. In this paper, an improved gravitational search algorithm (IGSA) is proposed and applied
to solve the identication problem for WTRS system under load and no-load running conditions. This
newly algorithm which is based on standard gravitational search algorithm (GSA) accelerates conver-
gence speed with combination of the search strategy of particle swarm optimization and elastic-ball
method. Chaotic mutation which is devised to stepping out the local optimal with a certain probability
is also added into the algorithm to avoid premature. Furthermore, a new kind of model associated to
the engineering practices is built and analyzed in the simulation tests. An illustrative example for param-
eter identication of WTRS is used to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed IGSA, as com-
pared with standard GSA and particle swarm optimization in terms of parameter identication accuracy
and convergence speed. The simulation results show that IGSA performs best for all identication
indicators.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The engineering simulation study largely depends on the type
of the model used. More accurate model leads to more accurate de-
sign and application. WTRS which is used to control frequency and
output power of hydro-turbine generator sets is one of the most
important parts of hydropower plant. This complicated system is
made up by water turbine speed governor, guide servomotor,
water turbine and generator, in which mechano-electric dynamics
and hydrodynamics are all involved [18]. As the complex charac-
ters of regulation system, it is difcult to extract features from ac-
tual prototype turbine directly for modeling simulation and
control, and hence parameter identication technique which is
used to get accurate simulation model and parameters through
experiments data and priori knowledge is widely studied for WTRS
system in the past decades. Kishor used the neural network nonlin-
ear autoregressive approach on the elastic character and inelastic
character water turbine column respectively and successfully
modeling the pipeline [9,10]. Xiao et al. established RBF neural net-
works models to identify water turbine generating unit [11] and
get a good result. An improved genetic algorithm (GA) is
introduced and applied to the identication problem of hydro
generation system model with uid transients [12], which obtain
higher parameters accuracy. In [13,14], particle swarm optimiza-
tion (PSO) is brought in and used for WTRS system model and
has been proved to be effective in handling the identication
problem. Kou et al. [15] proposed a new approach of bacterial for-
aging optimization algorithm (BFOA) and simulation results show
that the tested and the estimated outputs are in favorable
agreement.
However, for the complicated characters of WTRS, which the
linear model is a non-minimum phase system, these methods usu-
ally have some shortcomings in some extent. Articial neural net-
works (ANN) are easy to handle but hard to establish as the
difcult in choosing sufcient and accurate training data, suitable
training algorithm, number of neurons in the ANN, number of
ANN layers, etc. [16]. As an early proposed swarm intelligence
algorithm, some bad characters of GA and PSO such as trapped in
local optima in possible and premature phenomenons are gradu-
ally emerged in deeper research [1721]. Bacterial foraging optimi-
zation algorithm has little possibility tracking in local optima but
the rejection and attraction computation between Escherichia coli
bacteria is big and need a long time [22]. Therefore, a simplied
and easily implemented approach is especially reasonable for the
identication problem of WTRS.
Recently, a newly developed evolutionary computation optimi-
zation called gravitational search algorithm (GSA) [23,24] which is
based on the law of gravity and mass interactions has been
veried high quality performance in solving different optimization
0196-8904/$ - see front matter 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2013.10.060

Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 18907198929.

E-mail address: yxh71@163.com (X. Yuan).
Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 306315
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
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j our nal homepage: www. el sevi er . com/ l ocat e/ enconman
problems. Behrang et al. applied GSA to solve the future oil de-
mand forecasting problem [25] and successfully to estimate Irans
oil demand based on the structure of the Iran socio-economic con-
ditions, Gven et al. present the effectiveness and robustness of
GSA in solving the combined economic and emission dispatch
problem under various test systems [26], Duman et al. used GSA
on the optimal power ow and optimal reactive power dispatch
problems in power system [27,28], which obtained a high-quality
solution compared to PSO.
However, like others stochastic algorithm, classical GSA also
may suffer from premature and local convergence problem, espe-
cially in large scale and complex problems. In order to improve
the performance of classical GSA, numerous variants have been re-
ported. Tsai et al. combined PSO velocity and GSA acceleration into
a hybrid variant [29]. Khajehzadeh et al. developed GSA through
introducing an adaptive maximum velocity constraint to the stan-
dard GSA algorithm [30]. Li et al. proposed a kind of piecewise-
based gravitational search algorithm by designing a piecewise
function as the gravitational constant function [31]. Kumar et al.
introduced a new strategy which tunes the gravitational constant
using fuzzy IF/THEN rules [32]. Han and Chang [33] used a cha-
otic secure communication scheme on the GSA to minimize pre-
mature convergence. Ghasemi applied fuzzy-based mechanism
into GSA to gure out multi-objective problems [34]. Mallick
et al. [35] proposed a hybrid PSOGSA based algorithm on the sta-
tic state estimation problem.
Inspired by the thoughts of adding a new component or distur-
bance in classical GSA [2935], an improved GSA is proposed in
this paper, which is conceptually more concise and performs more
effectively than some GSA variants. In the proposed IGSA, we make
three improvements: rstly, the speed of each agent is not only
based on the law of gravity but also impacted by information of
best particle; secondly the off-boundary agents are treated with
a novel strategy, which increases diversity of the agents; nally,
a chaotic mutation operator is incorporated into the searching pro-
cess ensuring any feasible domain visited.
A mathematical model of WTRS associated to prototype turbine
is taken into consideration. This model keeps an eye on the differ-
ent values of water turbine coefcient under frequency distur-
bance condition and load disturbance condition, which is more
suitable for the analysis of power system. In addition, distinguish
from the model in [18], the newly model considers water turbine
in three parts with engineering practice, which makes the model
more close to the real turbine.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, WTRS
model is introduced, and the parameter identication problem for
the model is formulated. GSA algorithm is introduced and im-
proved in Section 3. Section 4 illustrates the general structure of
using IGSA approach to solve the identication problem. The com-
parative experiments are designed and the results are discussed in
Section 5. The conclusion is drawn in Section 6. Acknowledgment
is given in the end.
2. Model of WTRS
WTRS is a complicated system, mainly contains four parts, i.e.
speed governor, servomechanism, hydraulic system, generator sys-
tem. The structure of WTRS is illustrated in Fig. 1. In Refs. [18], the
simulation of WTRS system is either modeling in an ideal situation
or overly-simplication, which is not suitable for the electricity
system dynamic process modeling and analysis, especially when
the load of HGU is in a uctuated and transient process. In this sec-
tion, a kind of WTRS model with respect to the engineering prac-
tice has been studied and component models of WTRS are
illuminated respectively.
2.1. Model of speed governor
A major of micro-regulator are PID controller in the world. The
PID controller in water turbine could be expressed as [3,8,36]:
rs
1
1 bp
ki
s
kp
ki
s

kd s
1 Td s
_ _
cs xs 1
where kp is the proportional gain, ki is the integral gain, kd is the
differential gain, s is the Laplace operator, Td is the differential time
constant, bp is the feedback coefcient, c(s) and x(s) are the Laplace
transform of given speed c(t) and generator unit speed x(t).
2.2. Model of servomechanism
Servomechanism is the actuator of water turbine. The control-
lers output signal changes into hydraulic signal by the mechano-
electric servomechanism converter and then gradually strengthen
in turn across the guide device, auxiliary servomotor and main ser-
vomotor for providing enough power to operate guide vane. The
transfer function of servomechanism could be shown as [18]:
ys
1
Ty s 1
rs 2
where y(s) is the Laplace transform of guide vane opening signal
y(t), Ty is the inertia time constant of servomechanism.
2.3. Model of hydraulic system
Hydraulic system is the key component in WTRS, and it is a very
complicated system with multi-parameters, time-varying and non-
minimum phase characteristics. There is not any analytic expres-
sion to describe this system until now. However, associated to
the engineering practice [36], it usually can be considered into
three parts:
(1) The uid characteristics of penstock pipeline. Water pen-
stock is taken to be incompressible if penstock is short or
medium in length, the transfer function of penstock system
is [3,8,36]:
hs
qs
Tw s 3
where Tw is the water time constant, h(s) is the Laplace transform of
water head signal h(t), q(s) is the Laplace transform of turbine ow
rate signal q(t).
(2) The characteristics of hydro-turbine. In small signal perfor-
mance condition, we describe the uid character and torque
character of hydro-turbine as following [3,8,36]:
mts ex xs ey ys eh hs
qs eqx xs eqy ys eqh hs
_
4
where mt(s) is the Laplace transform of generated water torque
mt(t) throughout the water-hammering action, ex, ey, eh, eqx, eqy,
eqh are the partial derivatives of turbine whose calculation methods
are introduced in Ref. [36].
(3) The character of turbine rotor and mechanical inertia of
hydraulic plant. It can be accounted as a part of generators
mechanical inertia.
2.4. Model of generator system
Generator system in WTRS can be considered into two parts,
namely synchronous generators and load in grid. The model of syn-
chronous generators is often simplied as a one-order system, in
which HGU is considered as rigid body with a certain rotated
Z. Chen et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 306315 307
inertia. The transfer function of synchronous generators could be
shown as [18]:
xs
mts mgs

1
Ta s eg ex
5
where mg(s) is the Laplace transform of load torque mg(t), Ta is the
inertia time constant of generator, eg is the adjusting coefcient of
generator.
The model of load in grid also has a certain rotated inertia,
which includes the rotational inertia of various electromotor and
electric drive system. The function of inertia time constant of load
is similar to the function of inertia time constant of generator,
which is always recorded as Tb. Thus, Eq. (5) can be modied as fol-
lows once we considered the impact of load character.
xs
mts mgs

1
Ta
0
s eg ex
6
where Ta
0
= Ta + Tb, the value of Ta and Tb is usually measured by
means of the simulation experiments. Based on previous experi-
mental data, Tb = (0.240.30)Ta.
The transfer function of WTRS is shown in Fig. 2 [36]. From
Fig. 2, it can be found that WTRS is a high-order, multi-inputs
and multi-outputs (MIMO) system. In order to obtian the relation-
ship of different inputs and outputs, state space analysis is used in
this section. To easy building the state equations, the PID controller
in Fig. 2 makes the following changes:
kds
Tds1

kd
Td

kd=Td
Tds1
and the
rst part
kd
Td
is incorporated into the proportional gain kp. Selecting
x(t), xd(t), xi(t), y(t), h(t) as state variables (i.e. state vector
X x xd xi y h
T
, the parameters in X are marked in Fig. 2)
and c(t), mg(t) as input variables (i.e. input vector u mg c
T
,
the parameters in u are marked in Fig. 2), the state equations for
WTRS could be deduced as:
_
X
a11 0 0 a14 a15
a21 a22 0 0 0
a31 a32 a33 0 0
a41 a42 a43 a44 0
a51 a52 a53 a54 a55
_

_
_

_
X
b11 0
0 b22
0 b32
0 b42
b51 b52
_

_
_

_
u 7
where
a11
ex eg
Ta
0
; a14
ey
Ta
0
; a15
eh
Ta
0
a21
kd
Td
2
; a22
1
Td
a31 ki bp kp
kd
Td
_ _
1
_ _
; a32 ki bp; a33 ki bp
a41
kd kp Td
Td Ty
; a42
1
Ty
; a43
1
Ty
; a44
1
Ty
a51
eqx eg ex
Ta
0
eqh

eqy
Ty eqh
kp
kd
Td
_ _
; a52
eqy
eqh Ty
;
a53
eqy
eqh Ty
a54
1
eqh

eqy
Ty

eqx ey
Ta
0
_ _
; a55
1
eqh

eqx eh
Ta
0

1
Tw
_ _
b11
1
Ta
0
; b22
kd
Td
2
; b32 ki ki bp kp
kd
Td
_ _
;
b42
kd kp Td
Ty Td
b51
eqx
eqh Ta
0
; b52
eqy
eqh Ty
kp
kd
Td
_ _
3. The improved gravitational search algorithm
3.1. Brief introduction of GSA
GSA is a newly developed stochastic search algorithm based on
the physical law of gravity and the law of motion. In this new ap-
proach, a set of agents has been proposed to nd optimum solution
by analogy of Newtonian laws. Agents are considered as objects
and their performance are measured by their masses, and these ob-
jects attract each other by the gravity force, while this force causes
a global movement of whole objects towards the objects with
Generator system Hydraulic system
Speed
governor
Servo-
mechannism
Penstock
Water
turbine
Generator
Load
Fig. 1. Block diagram of water turbine regulation system.
Fig. 2. Mathematical simulation of water turbine regulation system.
308 Z. Chen et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 306315
heavier masses [23]. The following describes how GSA works for
the problem to be solved.
Usually, the target problem in the real world can be turned into
a minimization or maximization mathematical optimization prob-
lem, and then the GSA is used to solve this optimization problem.
Without loss of generality, in this section, we take minimization
problem as an example, which can be expressed as follows:
min f x x 2 R
n
8
where R
n
is the feasible domain in n dimensions of target problem.
Assumed there are N agents, the position of the ith agent is de-
ned as follows:
X
i
x
1
i
; . . . ; x
d
i
; . . . ; x
n
i
for i 1; 2; . . . ; N 9
where x
d
i
is the position of the ith agent in the dth dimension.
Masses are computed after calculating the tness of agents as
follows:
m
i
t
fit
i
tworstt
besttworstt
M
i
t
m
i
t

N
j1
m
j
t
_

_
10
where M
i
(t) and t
i
(t) represent mass and tness value of the ith
agent at time t, and best(t) and worst(t) respectively specify the
strongest and the weakest agent with regard to their tness route,
which is dened as follows (the denition of best(t) and worst(t)
for maximization optimization problem is on the contrary):
bestt min
j2f1;...;Ng
fit
j
t
worstt max
j2f1;...;Ng
fit
j
t
_
_
_
11
According to Newton gravitation theory, the force acting on the
ith agent from the jth agent at time t is calculated as follows:
F
d
ij
t Gt
M
i
t M
j
t
R
ij
t n
x
d
j
t x
d
i
t 12
where G(t) is gravitational constant at time t, R
ij
(t) is the Euclidian
distance between ith agent and jth agent (i.e. R
ij
(t) = kx
i
(t), x
j
(t)k
2
).
n is a small constant which is set for avoiding the divisor equal to
zero. (There usually uses R
ij
(t) instead R
2
ij
t in GSA because re-
searches show that the performance of R
ij
(t) is better than R
2
ij
t in
most cases.)
Based on the law of motion, the agent acceleration a
d
i
t is cal-
culated as follows:
a
d
i
t

j2kbest; ji
rand
j
F
d
ij
t
M
i
t

j2kbest; ji
rand
j
Gt
M
j
t
R
ij
t n
x
d
j
t x
d
i
t 13
where kbest is the set of rst K agents with the best tness value
and biggest mass, which is a function of time, initialized to K
0
at
the beginning and decreased with time, rand
j
is a random number
in the interval [0, 1]. (kbest is set to decrease the unnecessary calcu-
lation and enhance the efciency of optimization).
Thenthe next velocity of an agent is consideredas a fractionof its
current velocity added to its acceleration. Therefore, the next veloc-
ity and newly position of an agent can be computed as follows:
v
d
i
t 1 rand
i
v
d
i
t a
d
i
t 14
x
d
i
t 1 v
d
i
t x
d
i
t 15
where v
d
i
t and x
d
i
t are the velocity and position of ith agent at
time t in the dth dimension, respectively. rand
i
is a random number
between 0 and 1. It is to give a randomized feature to the search.
It must be pointed out that the gravitational constant G(t) is
important in determining the performance of GSA and dened as
follows:
Gt G
0
exp b
t
t max
_ _
16
where G
0
is the initial gravitational constant, b is a constant, t is the
current iteration, t_max is the maximum iteration.
The principle of GSA is shown in Fig. 3.
3.2. Improvements on GSA
A major of meta-heuristic optimization algorithms searching
the best solution due to the balance of two related concepts: explo-
ration and exploitation [37,38]. Exploration seeks to understand
the connectivity relationship of the search space, which is helpful
to the global optimal solution; exploration hunts for better optimal
solutions in adjacent area of the visited domain, which can
strengthen the convergence capability of local search. So an excel-
lent algorithm should improve the exploration ability in the rst
stage and then enhance the exploitation ability in the second stage
with the iterations increasing. In this section, some strategies
which can enhance the exploration and the exploitation ability of
algorithms are introduced.
3.2.1. Combination with particle swarm optimization
The reason why birds are able to nd foods mainly owes to the
capability of communication and memory among the ock. PSO
algorithm is the imitation of this capability. In the standard GSA,
the movement direction of each agent is determined by the total
force that other better agents act on it and lacking of communica-
tions between the agents. So in this paper, we try to improve the
searching ability of GSA by introducing the communication and
memory characteristics of PSO. The newly moving which is obedi-
ent to the law of gravity and received guide of memory and social
information is dened as follows:
v
d
i
t 1 r1 v
d
i
t a
d
i
t c1 r2 P
d
ibest
t x
d
i
t
c2 r3 G
d
best
t x
d
i
t 17
x
d
i
t 1 x
d
i
t v
d
i
t 18
Generate initial population
Evaluate the fitness for each agent
Update G, best and worst of the population
Calculate M and a for each agent
Update velocity and position
Meeting end of criterion
No
Return best solution
Yes
Fig. 3. Principle of GSA algorithm.
Z. Chen et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 306315 309
where r
1
, r
2
and r
3
are random variables in the range [0, 1], c
1
and c
2
are learning genes in the range [0, 2], P
ibest
(t) is the best position that
ith agent has ever suffer until time t, G
best
(t) is the past global best
position in the agents at time t.
This new strategy which is a hybrid and universal format of GSA
and PSO has been conrmed to own a faster convergence speed
(i.e. strong exploitation capability) than standard PSO and GSA
[3]. Besides, the special moving mechanism of GSA in Eq. (17) pro-
vides a slower motion of agents in the search space and hence a
more precise search [23].
3.2.2. Elastic-ball strategy
It is normal to encounter the agents whose movement positions
are beyond boundary during the evolutionary process for many
stochastic algorithms. We often handle it with the following
strategy:
if x
d
i
t > Ubd x
d
i
t Ubd or
if x
d
i
t < Lbd x
d
i
t Lbd 19
where Ub(d) and Lb(d) are upper limit and lower limit in the dth
dimension.
All off-boundary agents are gathered in the boundary after such
processing, which will generate a huge force compelling other
agents to move forward boundary in accordance with law of grav-
ity and the uniform distribution of agents is disrupted, which is
great harmful to the global exploration, especially when there
are local optimums around the boundary. Therefore, a new treat-
ment named elastic-ball strategy is used in this paper. This novel
strategy imitates the characteristic that the elastic-ball reects
back excessive information if there is a barrier blocking its moving
direction and described as follows:
if x
d
i
t > Ubd outside x
d
i
t Ubd x
d
i
t Ubd outside
20
if x
d
i
t < Lbd outside Lbd x
d
i
t x
d
i
t Lbd outside
21
After dealing with the two steps, most agents rebound to the
feasible domain. The few rest agents against the boundary will
be reset position as follows:
if x
d
i
t > Ubdjjx
d
i
t < Lbd x
d
i
t rand Ubd
Lbd Lbd
22
This novel elastic-ball strategy has overcome the shortcomings
that pulling the off-boundary agents back to the boundary directly
maybe mislead evolution steps and enhanced the varieties of
searching agents at the same time, which is helpful to the global
exploration.
3.2.3. Mutation operator based on chaotic behavior
Premature phenomenon and local convergence are the com-
mon problems for many intelligence algorithms and one of the
effective approaches in the current is brought in a mutation oper-
ator to overcome these unhealthy performances. In this paper, a
chaotic mutation operator which is able to visit all points in a
specied range without any repeat is incorporated into the im-
proved algorithm. The chaotic mutation searches optimal by
means of regularity, ergodicity and intrinsic stochastic properties
of chaotic motion and can nd out global optimum in great prob-
ability. By mutating the best particle based on chaotic sequences,
the current best agents will leap out local tracking and looking for
a better available solution in global. In order to ensure the muta-
tion operator would not make the tness of populations worse,
only if obtained agent by mutation is better than the worst agent,
it will replace the worst one in next generation. The chaotic pro-
cedure is described as follows:
(1) Create a newparticle X
new
x
1
new
; . . . ; x
d
new
; . . . ; x
n
new
and let it
be the best particle Gbest in populations as: X
new
= Gbest.
(2) Convert the position of X
new
into a chaos vector e as follows:
ed
0

x
d
new
Lbd
Ubd Lbd
d 1; 2; . . . ; n 23
where e(d) is the element of chaos vector e in the dth dimension.
(3) Search the global area by Logistic map as follows:
ed
0
u ed 1 ed 24
where e(d)
0
is the Logistic map result of vector variable e(d), u is a
control variable in which u = 4, the mapping is in full state.
(4) Convert the obtained chaos vector e(d)
0
into the position as
follows:
X
new
d Lbd ed
0
Ubd Lbd d 1; 2; . . . ; n 25
(5) Calculate tness of obtained new position X
new
and compare
it with tness of the worst particle Gworst in the population.
If X
new
s is better, replace Gworst by X
new
; else remap and
relocate new Logistic vector with iterative calculation of
Generate initial population
Evaluate agents fitness and store Pbest and Gbest
Update best(t), worst(t), and M(t) in the population
Calculate gravitational constant and acceleration for each agent
Update the velocity and position for each agent
Meeting end of criterion
Yes
Elastic-ball strategy
is invoked
Chaotic mutation is conducted for the best agent
Yes
No
Beyond boundarys
Evaluate the fitness for each agent s new position
Update Pbest and Gbest in the population
Return best solution
No
No
Fig. 4. Flowchart of the newly IGSA algorithm.
310 Z. Chen et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 306315
Eqs. (23) and (24) several times until the tness of X
new
is
better than the tness of Gworst or the mapping is covered
with every corner in the searching range.
Through chaotic mutation, the best agent has a bigger possibil-
ity to leap out the current local optimal domain if there are any
other better unsearched regions (i.e. strong exploration ability).
In addition, excellent characters of chaos movement such as
searching feasible areas without repeat are also contributed to glo-
bal exploitation.
By means of three strategies added in the algorithm, the im-
proved GSA (IGSA) is summarized as the following and is illus-
trated by the diagram in Fig. 4. In this work, IGSA will be used to
solve the model parameter identication problem and is applied
in parameter identication of WTRS. The performance of IGSA
and effectiveness of the improvements in this section will be dem-
onstrated through results in the later identication experiments.
Step 1: Initialization. Randomly initialize the agent position and
velocity.
Step 2: Fitness evolution. Calculate the tness of agents by their
initial position, storing current position of each agent as
the best history record position of the agent (i.e.
P
best
i
t x
i
t for t = 1) and position of best agent gbest(t)
(which owns the biggest tness value in the population)
as the best position in global (i.e. G
best
(t) = gbest(t) for
t = 1).
Step 3: Update best(t), worst(t), and M
i
(t) for i = 1, 2, . . . , N.
Step 4: Calculate gravitational constant in the current iteration
and acceleration for each agent.
Step 5: Update agents velocity and position with Eqs. (17) and
(18).
Step 6: Judge whether the new position of the agent is beyond
the boundary. If the new position is against the bound-
ary, elastic-ball program is invoked.
Step 7: Evaluate the tness in accordance with each agents new
position.
Step 8: Compare the obtained tness of new position x
i
(t + 1)
with tness of P
best
i
t while i changes from 1 to N. If
x
i
(t + 1) has a better tness value, replace position of
P
best
i
t by x
i
(t + 1).
Step 9: Compare tness of the agents with G
best
(t). If there is an
agent has a better tness than tness of G
best
(t), G
best
(t)
will be replaced by the position of the agent.
Step 10: Chaotic mutation is conducted for the best agent.
Step 11: Repeat Step 3 to Step 10 until the stop criteria reached.
4. The parameter identication strategy
For a system with known model structure but unknown
parameters, the parameter identication problem can be
converted into an optimization problem. The unknown
parameters vector for WTRS is usually set as a particle in swarm
or a gene in chromosome and a performance function measuring
how well the model response ts the system response is built to
optimize.
4.1. Objective function based on WTRS system
The model of WTRS has been illustrated by Fig. 2. The turbine
speed x, guide vane opening y and water torque m
t
are observed
output state variables. Although three outputs are selected as state
output variables, their contribution and importance in solving the
problem of parameter identication are different. At the same var-
iation of parameters, the more signicant the output of identied
model deviates from that of original system, the more important
the output in the objective function will be. And the weight for this
output is heavy. In this way, weights of different errors outputs are
designed, according to the signicance of deviation. The improved
object function is dened as:
C
IOF
h

N
k1

n
j1
wjz
j
k
^
z
j
k
2
26
where parameter vector h kp ki kd Ty Tw Ta
0
eg , out-
put of actual system z x y m
t
, z
_
x
_
y
_
m
_
t
is simulated
output of identied model, N is the number of samples, n is dimen-
sion of system output vector, in this work, n = 3, the weight vector
w w
1
w
2
w
3
.
The weights are calculated according to following steps:
(1) Set value of vector parameters h
i
, i = 1, 2, . . . , m (m is the
dimension of parameter vector h) in the WTRS system, and
obtain system output z
j
(k), k = 1, 2, . . . , N, j = 1, 2, . . . , n.
(2) Loop A: j = 1:n.
Loop B: i = 1:m.
Vary the ith parameter, h
new
= h
i
(1 + D%), and obtain sys-
tem output ^z
ji
k.
Calculate w
ji
kz
ji
^z
ji
k
2
.
The jth weight w
j
= average(w
ji
).
End Loop B.
End Loop A.
Original
system
Original
system
Measured
output
x
Estimated
system
Estimated
system
Fitness
Evaluator
Fitness
Evaluator
y
t
m
y
x
t
m
Simulated
output
IGSA-based
identifier
IGSA-based
identifier
System input
Identified parameter

(
IOF
C
Fig. 5. Diagram of IGSA based WTRS parameter identication.
Table 1
Transfer coefcients of turbine under two running condition.
Working condition Transfer coefcients in the water turbine system
ex ey eh eqx eqy eqh
No-load 1.0567 0.9080 1.4191 0.0574 0.7887 0.4571
Load 1.4673 0.7713 1.7179 0.4901 0.8184 0.7257
Z. Chen et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 306315 311
4.2. Parameter identication strategy
As shown in Fig. 5, the original and estimated systems are sup-
plied with a same excitation inputs and their outputs are given as
inputs to the tness evaluator, where the tness is calculated. The
tness function C
IOF

^
h is then used by IGSA-based identier to
identify the unknown parameter vector
^
h. By minimizing of tness
function through IGSA, the outputs of estimated system approxi-
mates to the outputs of original system, while the unknown
parameters trend to be equal with real values.
Parameter identication accuracy is measured by parameter er-
ror (PE):
PE
jh
i

^
h
i
j
h
i
100% i 1; 2; . . . ; m 27
and average parameter error (APE):
APE
1
m

m
i1
jh
i

^
h
i
j
h
i
100% 28
where h
i
is the parameter elements of h in original system,
^
h
i
is the
parameter elements of
^
h in estimated system, m is the size of h.
5. Experiments and results analysis
In this section, the WTRS is simulated in MATLAB, and the pro-
posed IGSA is applied to identify the parameters of simulated sys-
tem. The model of WTRS is illustrated in Fig. 2. Seven key
parameters are chosen to be estimated in simulation experiments
which are kp, ki, kd, Ty, Tw, Ta
0
and eg.
Inexperiments, simulationmodel of WTRS are excitedunder two
condition, loadconditionandno-loadcondition. Under no-loadcon-
dition, step disturbance of speed is employed to excite the system,
andunder loadcondition, stepdisturbanceof loadis employedtoex-
cite the system. The parameters of simulated model are set values
adopted in a Chinese hydroelectric station as follows:
Table 2
Comparison of average identication results of different methods under no-load condition.
Identied parameters h
i
System real value Average of identied parameters (30 trials)
PSO GSA IGSA
^
h
i
PE ^
h
i
PE ^
h
i
PE
kp 5.5912 6.0418 0.0806 5.9529 0.0716 5.5919 0.0007
ki 1.0611 0.0749 0.9295 0.5954 0.4477 1.0596 0.0033
kd 3.2800 4.1630 0.2692 3.5520 0.0921 3.2805 0.0006
Ty 0.1000 0.1472 0.4724 0.1180 0.1917 0.1000 0.0012
Tw 1.5000 1.4712 0.0197 1.4708 0.0283 1.5000 0.0004
Ta
0
12.000 17.159 0.4299 14.035 0.1762 12.005 9.0E-5
eg 0.4433 0.5071 0.1613 0.4148 0.0665 0.4431 0.0016
Table 3
Mean best cost and mean APE of 30 times under no-load condition.
PSO GSA IGSA
Mean best cost 86.319 20.782 0.0117
Mean APE 0.3375 0.1534 0.0013
0 20 40 60 80 100
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
C
o
s
t
Iteration
PSO GSA IGSA
Fig. 6. Comparison of average iteration process under no-load condition.
20 40 60 80 100
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
C
o
s
t
Iteration
PSO GSA IGSA
Fig. 7. Local magnication of average iteration process under no-load condition.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
0
1
2
Time
S
p
e
e
d
original system estimated system
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
-10
0
10
Time
T
o
r
q
u
eoriginal system estimated system
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
0
5
10
Time
G
u
i
d
e

v
a
n
e
original system estimated system
Fig. 8. Comparison of system outputs using IGSA under no-load condition.
312 Z. Chen et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 306315
The gains of PID in steady-state working condition are 5.5912,
1.0611, and 3.2800 (i.e. kp = 5.5912, ki = 1.0611, kd = 3.2801). The
characteristic parameter of penstock in the hydroelectric station
is calculated to approximate equal to 1.5 (i.e. Tw = 1.5). The inertia
time constant and the adjusting parameter of generator and load
are equal to 12 and 0.4433 respectively through the measurement
(i.e. Ta
0
= 12, en = 0.4433). The major servomotor time constant is
nearly approach 0.1 according to the historical data (i.e. Ty = 0.1).
The feedback coefcient and the differential time constant is set
to 0.04 and 0.28 according to the ever experience (i.e. bp = 0.04,
Td = 0.28).
The parameters of water turbine under different conditions are
shown in Table 1.
Based on the above discussion, the parameter vector (i.e.
h kp ki kd Ty Tw Ta
0
eg ) in original system is set as
h 5:5912 1:0611 3:2801 0:1 1:5 12 0:4433. The simu-
lation time is set to be 30 s which is long enough to make sure the
system change to be stable from a transient process. The sampling
time is set to be 0.01 s which is fast enough to capture system
dynamic process. The outputs in vector z, which contains turbine
speedx, guide vane opening y andturbine torque m
t
, are all sampled.
5.1. Comparison of identication method under no-load condition
In this part of experiments, IGSA, GSA and PSO have been em-
ployed to identify the parameters in the dynamic model of WTRS.
A step disturbance of given speed is adopted to excite the system.
The model described in Section 2 is simulated as the original sys-
tem, and experiments of parameter identication are conducted.
In simulation, to perform fair comparison in tness evaluation,
population size of PSO, GSA and IGSA are all 80. The maximum
generation is set to be 100 in the three algorithms. For GSA,
G
0
= 30, b = 10; For PSO, w = 0.6, c1 = c2 = 2; For IGSA, c1 = c2 = 2,
G0 = 30 and b = 10. In order to overcome the randomness of three
heuristic algorithms, 30 trials are tried and average results are
obtained.
Table 4
Comparison of average identication results of different methods under load condition.
Identied parameters h
i
System real value Average of identied parameters (30 trials)
PSO GSA IGSA
^
h
i
PE ^
h
i
PE ^
h
i
PE
kp 5.5912 8.7602 0.5668 6.4076 0.1538 5.6170 0.0060
ki 1.0611 1.4695 0.3938 1.1587 0.0988 1.0654 0.0052
kd 3.2800 4.1421 0.3530 3.5340 0.0928 3.2827 0.0044
Ty 0.1000 0.0500 0.5416 0.0950 0.1591 0.0997 0.0122
Tw 1.5000 1.4294 0.0471 1.4680 0.0240 1.4981 0.0021
Ta
0
12.000 17.685 0.4737 13.448 0.1262 12.043 0.0046
eg 0.4433 0.4312 0.0377 0.4482 0.0415 0.4458 0.0082
Table 5
Mean best cost and mean APE of 30 times under load condition.
PSO GSA IGSA
Mean best cost 0.5528 0.0923 0.0017
Mean APE 0.3448 0.0995 0.0061
0 20 40 60 80 100
0
5
10
15
20
25
C
o
s
t
Iteration
PSO GSA IGSA
Fig. 9. Comparison of average iteration process under load condition.
20 40 60 80 100
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
C
o
s
t
Iteration
PSO GSA IGSA
Fig. 10. Local magnication of average iteration process under load condition.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
0
0.1
0.2
Time
T
u
r
b
i
n
e

s
p
e
e
d
original system estimated system
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
-2
-1
0
Time
T
u
r
b
i
n
e

t
o
r
q
u
e
original system estimated system
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
-1.5
-1
-0.5
0
Time
G
u
i
d
e

v
a
n
e
original system estimated system
Fig. 11. Comparison of system outputs using IGSA under load condition.
Z. Chen et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 78 (2014) 306315 313
Comparing identication accuracy of different methods under
no-load, PE is used and listed in Table 2. Simulation results consid-
ering best cost and APE are listed in Table 3. In Tables 2 and 3, it is
seen that compared with GSA and PSO, IGSA achieve better param-
eter identication accuracy. In Table 2, the mean cost and mean
APE are as small as 0.0117 and 0.0013, respectively, much smaller
than those achieved by other methods, which conforms the valid-
ity of improvement measures added.
The convergence of algorithms is compared in Fig. 6, which
exhibits the average convergence of 30 times, it is seen that IGSA
could converge on the optimal quickly compared with other meth-
ods. Although in the incipient evolution period, the convergence of
PSO algorithm is better, but 20 iteration later, Fig. 7 which is the
local magnication gure of Fig. 6 exhibits IGSA has a faster con-
vergence speed while the other algorithms are tracking in a local
optimal soon.
Fig. 8 shows the estimated system outputs of WTRS obtained by
using the average identied parameters with IGSA, and then com-
pared with original system outputs, where guide vane opening,
turbine torque and turbine speed are compared. It is obvious origi-
nal curves and estimated curves are very closely, which means
parameter identication is effective and obtained higher accuracy.
5.2. Comparison of identication method under load condition
In order to verify the validity of IGSA in parameters identica-
tion of WTRS, different running conditions of WTRS is considered.
In this part, the system is under load condition, and a step distur-
bance of load is employed to excite the system. The parameters
regarding to water turbine under load condition is shown in
Table 1, the parameter vector set in original system is not changed,
and parameters of PSO, GSA and IGSA are also keep unchanged.
Identication experiments are repeated 30 times, average indices
of results are taken into consideration
Tables 4 and 5 show the identication accuracy achieved by dif-
ferent algorithms, where average PE, APE and best cost are taken
into consideration. The results show clear that compared with
PSO and GSA, IGSA performs best on all indices, which means the
proposed IGSA is effective. The average convergence process of
PSO, GSA and IGSA are compared in Figs. 9 and 10, which shows
that IGSA possesses excellent ability in obtaining optimal value
of cost function compared with other algorithms. Identied out-
puts using the average parameters based on IGSA are compared
with the original system outputs in Fig. 11, which exhibits the
identied system meet original system perfect.
6. Conclusion
In this paper, the problem of parameter identication of WTRS
is studied. A simulation model associated with engineering experi-
ence is brought in. An improved gravitational search algorithm is
proposed to the parameters identication of WTRS. Simulation re-
sults are provided to validate the effectiveness of the identied
method. It is shown that IGSA is capable of solving the problem
of parameters identication. Comparing to GSA and PSO, IGSA per-
forms the best with high accuracy and stability. Meanwhile, the
identication method is not focus on the specic input signal,
which is easy to implement in the system simulation and conve-
nient to transplant into other parameter identication problems.
Acknowledgment
The authors gratefully acknowledge the nancial supports from
National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.
51379080.
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