Evolutionary Algorithm Based Optimal Location of Series FACTS Device to Reduce the Losses in a Power System

Abstract

In recent years, continuous and reliable electric energy supply is the objective of any power system operation. FACTS devices are promising devices from the past ten years and are becoming popular. Also FACTS devices are very effective solution for many power system transmission problems. FACTS controllers can be used for steady state voltage regulation and control, steady state power flow can be controlled on a transmission line, transient stability enhancement, along with this it also reduces the problem of sub synchronous resonance. In this regard, Flexible Alternating Current Transmission Systems (FACTS) devices play a key role in enhancing controllability and to increase power transfer capability of the network. Thyristor Controlled Series Compensator (TCSC) is an upcoming FACTS device which can be used to meet this objective. The conventional methods in solving optimization problems in power systems suffer from several limitations due to necessities of derivative existence, providing suboptimal solutions, etc. computational Intelligence plays an important role in finding the optimal solutions for multi-objective functions. A combinatorial analysis problem in power systems can be solved by modern heuristic methods in finding optimal solution. Thus, in this paper, Genetic Algorithm, a type of evolutionary computation encapsulated with heuristic approach, is proposed for finding optimal location of TCSC. IEEE standard 30bus system is considered to test the credibility of the proposed algorithm and the results obtained are subjected to analysis to determine the optimal location.