Peer-to-Peer (P2p) MATLAB–powerfactory communication: Optimal placement and setting of power system stabilizer

Abstract

DIgSILENT PowerFactory is an extremely powerful power system analysis software used for simulating the electrical power networks. The smart grid envisions a modernised electrical grid that uses communication to gather and act on information. The ever-increasing communication and controls in power networks increase the complexity of the system. Co-simulation becomes essential to couple system simulators from different domains. This chapter presents the Peer-to-peer MATLAB–PowerFactory communication. The method is extremely simple file sharing approach to couple MATLAB and PowerFactory, and it is used to solve an optimisation problem. An illustrative two area power system is modelled using PowerFactory and an optimisation algorithm is implemented in MATLAB. The optimisation process is used for the optimal tuning and placement of Power System Stabilizer (PSS) in order to enhance the power system stability. The optimisation algorithm used in this chapter is an evolutionary algorithm (Particle Swarm Optimisation—PSO). MATLAB and DIgSILENT are employed and linked together in a genuine automatic data exchange procedure. Consequently, the test system and the controllers are modelled in DIgSILENT and the PSO algorithm is implemented in MATLAB. For evaluating the particles evolution throughout the searching process, an eigenvalue-based multi-objective function is used. The performance of the proposed PSO-based PSS test system in damping power system oscillations is proved through eigenvalue analysis and time-domain simulations.