Essam El-Din Mohamed Aboul Zahab

Wind turbines (WTs) have highly nonlinear and uncertain dynamics due to aerodynamic complexity, mechanical factors, and fluctuations in wind conditions. Turbulence and wind shear add complexity to modelling, especially in constant power region (region 3). Thus, an effective control design demands a deep understanding of the nonlinearities and uncertainties. This paper suggests a novel model-free reinforcement learning (RL) collective pitch angle controller to operate efficiently in region 3. The proposed controller stabilizes generator speed, maximizes power output, and minimizes fluctuations while accommodating system uncertainties, nonlinearity, and pitch limits. The disparity between WT dynamics due to wind speed perturbations and uncertainties is measured using a gap-metric criterion. The controller design adopts a deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithm to train six agents in a medium-fidelity WT environment at different mean wind speeds to ensure the controller's robustness. Initially, imitation learning is used for efficient sample collection to fasten training convergence. Afterwards, the agent learns by interacting with the environment. After the training, the pitch control outputs from multi-trained agents are processed by a fuzzy system to have smooth transitions under different operating conditions. The resulting fuzzy DDPG (F-DDPG) controller is deployed to obtain the optimal pitch control action. The performance of the proposed F-DDPG controller is compared to the gain-scheduled PI (GSPI), Linear-Quadratic-Regulator (LQR), and single-DDPG-agent controllers. The controllers are simulated in high-fidelity onshore and offshore 5-MW WT environments using the OpenFAST/MATLAB simulation tools. The results reveal the superiority of the proposed controller in generalizing its optimal performance in different operating conditions.

The purpose of distributed generation systems (DGS) is to enhance the distribution system (DS) performance to be better known with its benefits in the power sector as installing distributed generation (DG) units into the DS can introduce economic, environmental and technical benefits. Those benefits can be obtained if the DG units' site and size is properly determined. The aim of this paper is studying and reviewing the effect of connecting DG units in the DS on transmission efficiency, reactive power loss and voltage deviation in addition to the economical point of view and considering the interest and inflation rate. Whale optimization algorithm (WOA) is introduced to find the best solution to the distributed generation penetration problem in the DS. The result of WOA is compared with the genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and grey wolf optimizer (GWO). The proposed solutions methodologies have been tested using MATLAB software on IEEE 33 standard bus system.