Optimal UPFC Placement for Voltage Stability Enhancement

The Unified Power Flow Controller is a versatile and important device for improving the operational efficiency of power systems in the flexible AC transmission systems family. It finds applications in improving voltage stability in addition to provide a better voltage profile and reducing transmission loss. This paper presents a Chemical Reaction Inspired Optimization based method for placement of unified power flow controllers with the objective of raising the voltage stability. Most of the existing methods place all the given unified power flow controllers without analysing whether each of the given unified power flow controllers is actually needed to improve voltage stability or other selected performances. The proposed method tries to place only the essential unified power flow controllers from the allocated number of devices, besides providing optimal line locations and unified power flow controller parameters. It also includes the results of the proposed method for three standard test systems and compares them with existing methods to depict the dominance of the proposed method.