Optimal Location and Size of FACTS Devices for Distributed Voltage Control

Distributed voltage control is an essential problem in power systems as it is required by the power system to maintain the steady state voltage of all buses during normal operation as close as possible to the nominal value. FACTS devices can be used to achieve this control by providing a reactive power source to control the load flow to ensure that there are no buses with voltage violating the acceptable range of operation. This paper presents a reliable optimization approach to find the optimum size and location of three different types of Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) devices TCSC, STATCOM and SVC with two options TCSC, STATCOM and TCSC, SVC. The performance and the investment cost of SATCOM and SVC are compared at different overloading conditions to decide which type is the optimum. The main objective is to minimize the total voltage deviations, the problem is formulated for steady-state studies. A Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used as an optimization technique and the proposed technique is applied on IEEE 30-bus system.