Bacterial foraging technique-based optimized active power filter for load compensation

The conventional method of obtaining the coefficients of proportional plus integral (PI) controllers for the active power filter utilizes a linear model of the PWM inverter. The values so obtained may not give satisfactory results for a wide variation in operating conditions. This paper presents a new algorithm based on the foraging behavior of E-coli Bacteria in the human intestine, to optimize the coefficients of the PI controller. Through the simulation results, it is observed that the dynamic response of the bacterial foraging PI (BF-PI) controller is quite satisfactory. The proposed BF technique is compared with the genetic algorithm (GA) and found to converge faster than GA to reach the global optimum solution.