Research on the Desired Dynamic Selection of a Reference Model-Based PID Controller: A Case Study on a High-Pressure Heater in a 600 MW Power Plant

Abstract

Nowadays, the proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller dominates industrial process control. Because of the compromise between parameters, its tuning is still a challenge for practitioners. A reference model (RM)-based PID controller—the desired dynamic equational (DDE) PID controller—is regarded as a viable alternative since it can readily eliminate the compromise. However, how to design its desired dynamic equation remains an unsolved problem which limits the application of DDE PID controllers in large-scale industrial systems. Therefore, this paper studies the desired dynamic selection of DDE PID controllers and proposes a simple and practical selection procedure without using the accurate plant model. Simulations, experiments and filed tests demonstrate the convenience and advantages of the proposed method, thus making DDE PID an effective controller type which is specifically appealing to engineers. Moreover, the successful application of DDE PID controllers to a high-pressure (HP) heater in a coal-fired power plant shows their promising prospects in the future power industry with the increasing demand to integrate more renewables into the grid.

A process-model-free method for model predictive control via a reference model-based proportional-integral-derivative controller with application to a thermal power plant

“…First, we concern the function of DDE-PID in the hierarchical control structure. According to Reference (Shi et al, 2022c), if parameters of DDE-PID are tuned appropriately, the closed-loop output can accurately track the response of the RM which is depicted as,…”

“…3, this assumption is reasonable. According to Reference (Shi et al, 2022c), if the following criteria are satisfied, the closed-loop output of the DDE-PID tracks the desired dynamic response accurately.…”

“…First, the tuning procedure of DDE-PID has been previously proposed by Shi et al (2022c), and its effectiveness has been validated by a field test on a high-pressure heater of a 600 MW thermal unit. Therefore, it will not be detailed in this paper.…”

“…Therefore, it will not be detailed in this paper. Moreover, it was suggested that k = 10ω d to obtain better control performance and avoid the noise amplification (Dorf and Bishop, 2017;Shi et al, 2022c). Note that the tuning of DDE-PID in the proposed hierarchical control structure of MPC-DDE is based on the previously proposed method, and that the actuator constraint is considered when DDE-PID is being tuned (Shi et al, 2022c).…”

“…If the DDE-PI or PID is tuned appropriately, the closedloop output can accurately track the response of the typical firstor second-order system. Up to now, the advantages of DDE-PI or PID, such as fast and moderate reference tracking performance, strong disturbance rejection ability, and simple tuning procedure, have been validated by both simulations (Wang et al, 2009;Hu et al, 2010;Xue et al, 2010;Zhang et al, 2010;Makeximu et al, 2015;Wang et al, 2018) and field tests on the coal-fired power plant (Shi et al, 2022b;Shi et al, 2022c).…”