A review on active disturbance rejection control of power generation systems: Fundamentals, tunings and practices

The uncertainties caused by flexible integration of different energy sources as well as external disturbances make control of power generation systems become essential for the economical and safe operation. The traditional Proportional–Integral (PI) or Proportional–Integral–Derivative (PID) controllers are becoming insufficient when faced with the various uncertainties. The emergence of Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) provides a promising alternative to estimate and then compensate uncertainties while maintaining some merits of PI/PID. This review gives a thorough understanding of ADRC as a tutor in the field of power generation. Firstly, it introduces the underlying motivations why ADRC can be the promising controller and thus can achieve appropriate control performance for power generation systems, with a particular focus on uncovering the fundamentals of ADRC to deal with uncertainties. Then, some formulaic tuning methods are summarized and analyzed to reveal their essential principles as well as the underlying relationship among them. After this, some representative field applications of ADRC are illustrated to show its powerful ability to compensate uncertainties, in comparison with traditional PI/PID controllers. Finally, it discusses some practical issues faced by implementing ADRC in power generation systems.