Optimal location and sizing of STATCOM for voltage security enhancement using PSO-TVAC

STATCOM is a second generation, shunt connected Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) device. STATCOM is used to support bus voltage by injecting or absorbing the reactive power, therefore it is capable to enhance voltage security. However, owing to the considerable cost of the FACTS device involved, it is important to find the optimal location and sizing of the device in a power system to obtain maximum benefits of the devices. In this paper, most severe single line outage contingencies are considered for finding optimal location and sizing of STATCOM in a power system. As a first step, contingency ranking is performed to determine the most severe line outages by evaluating voltage performance index (VPI). Thereafter Particle Swarm Optimization-Time Varying Acceleration Coefficients (PSO-TVAC) algorithm is used to find the location and size of STATCOM. The proposed methodology is demonstrated on standard IEEE 30-bus system.