Summary
Nonlinear dynamical system exhibit bifurcation, chaos, and instability due to initial conditions and parametric variation. The power system is also nonlinear dynamical system, which exhibits these behaviors due to different initial operating conditions and uncertain variation in parameter like reactive power load demand. The fractional‐order controller is introduced as the better choice for several control systems as compared to conventional proportional‐integral‐derivative controllers owing to its merits. This paper proposes a first ever numerical study of novel use of optimized fractional‐order controller for control of chaos in power system. This paper discusses the steps to optimize the order of fractional controller. The role of fractional‐order controller is to inject or withdraw the precise amount of reactive power to control chaotic nature of voltage. The proposed controller will perturb the dynamics of the nonlinear power system and push it to nonchaotic and bounded stable state because of precise state feedback control. Precise perturbation in reactive‐power value inhibits voltage bifurcation point, chaos, and instability thereafter. Fourth order benchmark model of the power system is used as a case study in the paper.