Application of Touring Ant colony Optimization technique for optimal power flow incorporating thyristor controlled series compensator

In this work, a touring ant colony optimization (TACO) for the solution of the optimal power flow (OPF) with use of controllable FACTS devices is studied. This method can provide an enhanced economic solution with the use of controllable FACTS devices. Thyristor controlled series compensators (TCSC) is considered in this method. In deregulated power system environment it is necessary to maintain specified power in contract transmission line path. Hence the specified power flow control, constraints due to the use of FACTS devices are included in the OPF problem. The sensitivity analysis is carried out for the location of FACTS devices. The proposed method can be considered for solving two subproblems. The first sub-problem is a power flow control problem by incorporating TCSC in the contract path of power system network and the second sub-problem is the conventional OPF problem. The two sub-problems are simultaneously solved using touring ant colony optimization (TACO) algorithm. The solutions are compared and tested using a standard IEEE 30-bus system thereby validating feasibility of this approach.