As the percentage of renewable energy source within the energy production mix has expanded, it's become gradually difficult to determine the appropriate values for controller gains and model parameters. Controlling system frequency of interconnected power system during sudden load disturbance requires careful consideration of the controller gain values and small signal stability model parameters. This study proposes an innovative methodology for ascertaining controller gain values and model parameters for plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) in load frequency control (LFC) applications. Proposed method uses the root locus (RL) approach to find the suitable controller gain values and model parameters for PEVs. This paper offers a thorough mathematical description of the proposed RL approach. Routh approximation method is used for reduced-order modelling (ROM), which comprises thermal and PEV systems, to reduce complexity of higher-order system while designing controllers. Fractional order proportional-integral-derivative controller (FO-PID) is proposed, and its parameters are adjusted using particle swarm optimization (PSO) optimization tool. To validate the efficacy of suggested method, a comprehensive comparison of time response parameters and performance indices (PI) is carefully carried out. Also, the various PEVs state of charge (SOC) levels is investigated, and effects of these levels are studied in LFC. The proposed method for determining gain value is highly reliable and efficient, outperforming existing methodologies in the literature.