In this study, optimum values of unknown seven parameters of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) stack are generated for the sake of appropriate modelling. An objective function is adopted to minimise the sum of square errors (SSE) between the experimental data and the corresponding estimated results. A novel application of grasshopper optimisation algorithm (GOA) is engaged to minimise the SSE subjects to set of inequality constraints. Three study cases of typical commercial PEMFCs stacks are demonstrated and verified under various steady‐state operating scenarios. Necessary subsequent comparisons to new results by others found in updated state‐of‐the‐art are made. Sensitivity analysis of defined parameters is carried out. It is found that the PEMFC model is susceptible to the deviations of optimised parameters as the errors are substantially disturbed which signifies the value of the GOA‐based method. In addition, performance measures to indicate the robustness of the GOA‐based methodology are pointed out. At this moment, dynamic model of the stack is addressed and incorporated to demonstrate its dynamic response. Detailed MATLAB/SIMULINK simulation model is implemented to study the PEMFC dynamic performance. The simulated test cases emphasise the viability and effectivity of the GOA‐based procedure in steady‐state and dynamic simulations.

In this study, an efficient load frequency controller (LFC) for standalone two‐area hybrid microgrid system (HμGS) is addressed. Social‐spider optimiser (SSO) is applied to fine tune the proposed proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controllers by generating their optimal settings. The integral time multiplied summation of absolute deviations and the gains of PID controllers define the fitness function and control variables, respectively. The performance of the proposed SSO‐based method is demonstrated on an isolated HμGS complete with variety of energy storage systems under number of scenarios. The scenarios include load fluctuations, variations in wind speed, and sun irradiance employing real site measurements. In this study, photovoltaic generating arrays and wind turbine generators are not participating in system frequency regulations due the proposal of their maximum power tracking operation strategy. The signatures of time‐domain dynamic responses and cropped numerical results ascertain that the proposed SSO‐based LFC scheme is promising in diminuting the signal deviations and in short time. Further validations for cropped results produced by SSO are made compared with powerful optimisation tool such as genetic algorithm which signify the tuned PID gains.