Design and parameters optimization of multi-machine power system stabilizers using Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

Power system stabilizers (PSSs) are used to generate supplementary control signals for the excitation system to damp electromechanical oscillations. This paper presents an Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) optimization based approach for tuning the parameters of PSSs in multi-machine power systems. The stabilizers are tuned to simultaneously shift the undamped and lightly damped electromechanical modes of all plants to a prescribed zone in the s-plane. A multi-objective problem is formulated to optimize a composite set of objective functions comprising the damping factor and the damping ratio of lightly damped electromechanical modes. The performance and robustness of optimized PSS using ABC algorithm is then, tested on New England New York 16-machine, 68-bus system under different operating conditions. Eigenvalue analysis and nonlinear time domain simulation results shows the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed ABCPSS over CPSS under different operating conditions and system configurations.