%0 Journal Article %T Anarchic Society Optimization Based PID Control of an Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR) System %J Electrical and Electronic Engineering %@ 2162-8459 %D 2012 %I %R 10.5923/j.eee.20120204.05 %X This paper addresses a robust method for optimal PID control of Automatic Voltage Regulation (AVR) system to damp terminal voltage oscillation following disturbances in power systems. The optimization is carried out by the Anarchic Society Optimization (ASO) algorithm which is inspired by a social grouping in which members behave anarchically to improve their situation. The optimal tuning problem of the PID gains to control of AVR system against parametric uncertainties is formulated as an optimization problem according to time domain based objective function. It is solved by the ASO algorithm which has a strong ability to find the most optimistic results to reduce control system effort and find optimal design. It is carried out under multiple operation conditions to achieve the desired level of terminal voltage regulation. The effectiveness of the optimized PID controller with ACO algorithm is investigated under system parameter changes in comparison with the results of PID controller tuned via of the recently reported optimization method like the craziness based Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Vector Evaluated PSO (VEPSO) approaches. The simulation results is depicted to illustrate robust performance of the proposed ASO technique for enhancement transient stability of AVR system that of the other heuristics methods in the literature. The results analysis reveals that the ASO based PID type AVR control system is effective and provides good terminal voltage oscillations damping ability. Moreover, it is superior that of the other PSO method in terms of accuracy, convergence and computational effort. %K AVR %K ASO Algorithm %K PID Controller %K Power System Dynamics %U http://article.sapub.org/10.5923.j.eee.20120204.05.html