The present aspect studies automatic generation control (AGC) of a multi-area multi-source test system with the effects of thyristor controlled series compensation (TCSC) and superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) units. The studied test system is a three-area power system model having thermal–thermal unit in area-1, thermal-hydro unit in area-2 and thermal-gas unit in area-3. The same is imposed by appropriate time delay, governor deadband, generation rate constraint nonlinearities. A nature-inspired optimization technique called moth-flame optimization algorithm is implemented for solving the constrained optimization parameters. The step load perturbation (SLP) and random SLP are used for the dynamic performance analysis. The designed controller based dynamic responses are also studied with wide perturbation in parametric values through robustness analysis. Analysis reveals that the proposed control strategy, considering SMES and TCSC units, improves the dynamical performances of system significantly in terms of settling time and overshoot against parametric uncertainties against a wide range of area load demands and disturbances even in the presence of system nonlinearities.