In this paper, design and performance analysis of bacterial foraging optimization algorithm (BFOA)-optimized fuzzy PI/PID (FPI/FPID) controller for automatic generation control of multi-area interconnected traditional/restructured electrical power systems is presented. Firstly a traditional two-area non-reheat thermal system is considered, and gains of the fuzzy controller are tuned employing BFOA using integral of squared error objective function. The supremacy of this controller is demonstrated by juxtaposing the results with particle swarm optimization (PSO), firefly algorithm (FA), BFOA, hybrid BFOA-PSObased PI and fuzzy PI controllers based upon pattern search (PS) and PSO algorithms for the same power system structure. The approach is then extended to a two-area reheat system, and improved results are found with the purported FPI/FPID controller in comparison with PSO and artificial bee colony optimized PI controller. Further, the approach is implemented on a traditional multi-source multi-area (MSMA) hydrothermal system and its superb performance is observed over genetic algorithm and hybrid FA-PS tuned PI controller. Additionally, to demonstrate the scalability of the designed controller to cope with restructured power system, the study is also protracted to a restructured MSMA