Optimal placement of unified power flow controller in power system using imperialist competitive algorithm

Abstract: This paper presents a Modified Shuffled Frog Leaping Algorithm to obtein the optimal number and location of FACTS devices in a power system. Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC) has great flexibility that can control the active and reactive power flow and bus voltages, simultaneously. Decoupled model of the UPFC is applied to maximize the system loadability subject to the transmission line capacity limits and specified voltage level. Chaotic Optimization Algorithm (COA) is a new memetic meta heuristic algorithm with efficient mathematical function and global search capability. The objective is to maximize the transmission system loadability subject to the transmission line capacity limits and specified bus voltage levels. Using the proposed method, the location of UPFCs and their parameters are optimized simultaneously. The proposed approach is examined and tested on IEEE 14-bus system. The results show that the steady state performance of power system can be effectively enhanced due to the optimal location and parameters of the UPFC