Optimal Voltage Stability Improvement under Contingencies using Flower Pollination Algorithm and Thyristor Controlled Series Capacitor

Recent power systems necessitate for maintaining a safe voltage stability as the number of problems such as contingencies and reactive power insufficiency are increasing. In this paper, installation and sizing of Flexible Alternating Current Transmission System (FACTS) devices have been introduced for solving the voltage stability problems under contingencies. The FACTS device to be used is Thyristor Controlled Series Capacitor (TCSC). Besides improving the voltage magnitude at all buses to a desired level, installation of TCSC at proper locations can minimize total transmission losses of the system. To conduct the sizing task, the newly developed Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA) has been implemented as the engine for optimization. Through experimentation, the results proved that the proposed placement and sizing technique has successfully mitigated the voltage stability problems. In addition, the computation time for FPA"s convergence was tolerable with optimum results.