Enhancement of Voltage Stability and Reactive Power Control using Modern Optimization Methods

Abstract

The voltage stability has great effects in power systems planning and operation. Increasing demand for electricity and unmatched expansion in generation and transmission system leads to possible voltage instability problems. The possibility of voltage instability is more probable or severe in a system under emergency, like line outage, than in the system under normal condition. FACTS and distributed generation are considered as good solutions to improve the voltage stability and power loss reduction.

This thesis presents a study of the methods of selecting the size and location of DGs with different penetration level in a distribution network. Also, the impact of using FACTS (i.e. STATCOM and UPFC) is studied. The study depends on different optimization methods such as Genetic Algorithm (GA), Differential Evolution (DE) and Hybrid Big Bang Big Crunch (HBBBC) in order to improve certain objective function which contains the minimization of power loss and improvement of voltage profile and enhancement of voltage stability.

Moreover, the thesis introduces the effect of time varying load model on the voltage stability in the presence of the distributed generation as Photovoltaic is added by using the optimization tools and running Probabilistic Optimal Power Flow (POPF).