Designing SSSC, TCSC, and STATCOM controllers using AVURPSO, GSA, and GA for transient stability improvement of a multi-machine power system with PV and wind farms

Abstract

In this paper, the effects of three FACTS controllers, static synchronous series compensator (SSSC), thyristor-controlled series compensator (TCSC), and static synchronous compensator (STATCOM), on the transient stability of a multi-machine power system in the presence of two 200 MW wind farms based on a doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) and a 120 MW photovoltaic (PV) solar plant are studied. Also, power system stabilizers (PSSs) are installed on four synchronous machines. It is generally accepted that there is a threat to the stability of power systems with the penetration of wind farm and PV plant. Therefore, in order to improve transient stability in the power system, this paper proposes the application of PI controllers in PV and wind farm controllers and a combination of PSS and FACTS controllers, whose coordination is very important. The design problems of the PSS, FACTS, and PI controllers are formulated as an optimization problem, and the adaptive velocity update relaxation particle swarm optimization (AVURPSO) algorithm, gravitational search algorithm (GSA), and genetic algorithm (GA) are employed to search for the optimal controller parameters. These three approaches identify the solution to a given objective function, but they employ different strategies and computational efforts. Therefore, a comparison of their performance is required.