Corresponding Regular paper Investigation of Small Signal Stability Performance of a Multimachine Power System Employing PSO Based TCSC Controller

An attempt has been made in this paper to investigate the small signal stability problem of a real multimachine power system with the application of Thyristor Controlled Series Compensator (TCSC). Though Power System Stabilizers (PSS) are mandatory requirements for damping of oscillations in the power system, its performance gets affected by changes in network configurations, load variations etc. In order to achieve appreciable damping, installation of TCSC has been suggested here in addition to conventional PSS. However, the performance of any FACTS device highly depends upon its parameters and its placement at suitable locations in the power network. In this paper, a soft computing technique, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) has been employed for determining the optimal locations and parameters of the TCSC controller in order to mitigate small signal oscillations. In addition to this, based on critical eigenvalue variations a new indicator being termed as Small Signal Stability Rank (SSSR) has been proposed for assessment of effectiveness of the PSO based TCSC controller for three major contingencies