I.J.

Intelligent Systems and Applications, 2014, 03, 69-75

Published Online February 2014 in MECS (http://www.mecs-press.org/)
DOI: 10.5815/ijisa.2014.03.07

Application of GA for Optimal Location of

FACTS Devices for Steady State Voltage
Stability Enhancement of Power System
Anju Gupta
YMCA University of Science and Technology, Faridabad, India
E-mail:[email protected]
P.R.Sharma
YMCA University of Science and Technology, Faridabad, India
E-mail:[email protected]
Abstract This paper presents a non traditional
optimization technique, genetic algorithm to seek the
optimal allocation, type and size of FACTS devices to
control line flows, to maintain bus voltage to desired
level and to minimize system losses. The targeted
objectives are maximizing the static security margins
and voltage stability while minimizing losses.
Congestion management is also done by optimally
placing FACTS controllers with line outage. Matlab
coding has been developed for the purpose of
simulation. Assessments are done on IEEE 30 bus
system against different loading conditions with two
FACTS devices SVC and TCSC implemented in steady
state and the results verify the potency of propound
algorithm to find the optimal location for power system
stability.

Index Terms FACTS, TCSC, SVC, Genetic

I.

Introduction

The power electronics technology development gives

good opportunities to design new power system
equipment for power system stability. FACTS
technology has become a very effective means to
improve capacity of existing power transmission
network without the necessity of adding new
transmission lines. These devices control the power
flow by reducing the power flow in overloaded lines
and reduce line losses [1-3].
To achieve good performance of these devices it is
important to ascertain their location because of their
significant costs. Several methods are used for finding
out the location of these devices in an integrated system
but various complications are involved and also the
results obtained are not optimal in some cases [4, 5].
The issue of optimal location of FACTS devices has
been extensively brainstormed and several strategies
have been proposed and implemented, but most of the
Copyright 2014 MECS

research is based on the optimization of single objective

like voltage stability, loss reduction or cost
minimization [6-8]. Some of the researchers have
factored in the cost of generator and the cost of
installation of FACTS devices to reach at the total cost
of the system [9]. Optimal location of FACTS devices
for reducing the total cost has been discussed in [13].In
[15] congestion management has been done by taking
branch loading as objective function. In [16] a PSO
based approach has been discussed to find the optimal
location of FACTS devices to improve loadability and
reduce the overall cost of installation. Different type of
FACTS devices and their locations have different
advantages, so the type, rating and location have to be
determined
simultaneously.
This
concurrent
optimization can be done with genetic algorithm.
This paper presents a genetic based method to seek
the type, rating and best location of FACTS controllers
to maximize the branch loading and voltage stability
reducing the overall system losses. Congestion,
management is also done by optimally placing FACTS
controllers.

II. Problem Formulation

The stability problem is to optimize the steady state
performance of a power system in terms of one or more
objective functions while satisfying various equality
and inequality constraints.

2.1 Objective Functions

Voltage Level (VL):
This objective function takes voltage levels into
account. For voltage levels between 0.9 to 1.1 p.u, the
value of objective function is equal to 1.Outside this
range, the value decreases exponentially with the
voltage deviation [16].

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70

Application of GA for Optimal Location of

FACTS Devices for Steady State Voltage Stability Enhancement of Power System

; if 0.9 Vb 1.1
1
VS

exp 1 Vb otherwise

(1)

These represent the system operating conditions such

as generator voltage VG ;generator reactive power
output QG ;transformer tap T; switchable VAR
compensations QC and load voltages VL.

Maximize branch loading

The objective function is associated
with line
loading and penalizes overloads in the lines. This term,
called OVL is calculated for every line of the system.
While the branch loading is less than 100%, its value is
equal to 1: then it decreases exponentially with the line
overloading. To speed up the convergence, the product
of all objective functions is taken [15, 16]

QGiminQGi QGimax

,i=1.NG

Timin Ti Timax

i=1.................NT

Where 0.9Ti1.0
0.95<VLi<1.05

OVL

Branch loading

VGimin <VGi<VGimax

Line

(2)

Where VLi is the voltages of all the load buses.

line

OVL
Ppq
exp
1

Ppq max

P Ppq max
pq

Ppq Ppq max

III. Proposed Algorithm

(3)

Where OVL is line overload factor.

Loss Minimization
The objective is to minimize the system losses [17]
nl

PL

gk V

V j 2 2VV
i j cos(i j )

(4)

k 1

The aim of the optimization is to find the best

location of FACTS devices to optimize certain
objectives. In this paper we use genetic algorithm
optimization technique taking location, type and rating
as variables. Genetic algorithms are computerized
search optimization algorithm based on the theory of
natural selection. An individual is represented with
three strings of length. The first string represents the
values of the devices. It can take discrete values
between 0 and 1, 0 corresponding to the minimum value
of the device and 1 to the maximum. According to
the model of the FACTS, the real value of the device is
calculated with the relation.
VREALF

2.2 Problem Constraints

These constraint represent load flow equations as

nl

V [G cos( )
j

ij

k 1

Bij sin( i j )] 0

(5)

nb

QGi QDi Vi

V [G sin( )
j

k 1

Bij cos( i j )] 0

ij

VMINF + ( VMAXF VMINF )

(7)

Where VMINF and VMAXF are respectively the

minimum and maximum set value of the device, and is
its normalized value. The second string is related to the
kind of the devices. A value is given to each type of
modeled device 1 for SVC, 2 for TCSC. The last string
is the location of the devices. It denotes the numbers of
the lines where the FACTS are to be placed.

Equality Constraint

PGi PDi Vi

(6)

Where i=1,2nb is the number of buses; PG

and QG are the generator real and reactive power
respectively; PD and QD are the real and reactive loads
respectively, Gij and Bij are the transfer conductance and
susceptance between bus i and bus j respectively.

GA starts with random generation of initial

population and then the selection crossover and
mutation are performed until the best solution is
obtained. GA is practical algorithm and very easy to
implement in a power system analysis. Various steps to
be performed in Genetic Algorithm implementation are
as follows.

3.1 Encoding

Inequality Constraints

Initial population is generated through encoding.

Three parameters are taken namely: the location, type
and its rated value. Each individual is represented by N
number of strings, where N is the number of FACTS
devices to be required in the power system, as shown in
Figure 1. Here N is 5.

Copyright 2014 MECS

I.J. Intelligent Systems and Applications, 2014, 03, 69-75

Application of GA for Optimal Location of

FACTS Devices for Steady State Voltage Stability Enhancement of Power System

Q=QSVC

71

(9)

3.2 Reproduction
The Objective function is calculated for each
generation and the fitness value is calculated to find the
fitness of each individual. The individual is selected to
for the new generation based on fitness.

Fig. 1: Individual configuration of FACTS devices

The first string shows the no of lines where the

device has to be placed. The second string shows the
types of the devices. A value is given to each type of
modeled FACTS device: 1 for SVC; 2 for TCSC and 3
for no FACTS device. The scope is always there to add
new devices. The last value represents the rating of each
FACTS device. This value is between 1 and +1. 1
corresponding to the minimum value that the device can
take and 1 to the maximum.

3.3 Crossover
The crossover is done to rearrange the information of
two individuals to produce new ones. Two point
crossover is used here.

3.4 Mutation
Mutation is used to introduce some sort of artificial
diversification in the population to avoid premature
convergence before the local minima.

TCSC:
By modifying the reactance of the transmission line,
the TCSC acts as the capacitive or inductive
compensation respectively. In this study, the reactance
of the transmission line is adjusted by TCSC directly.
The rating of TCSC is depends on the reactance of the
transmission line where the TCSC is located:

Xij XLine XTCSC ,

(8)

XTCSC rtcsc *XLine

Where XLine is the reactance of the transmission line

where the TCSC is placed and rtcsc is the coefficient
which represents the degree of compensation by TCSC.
TCSC has a working range between 0.7X Line and 0.2
X Line.

SVC:
The SVC can be operated as both inductive and
capacitive compensation. It is modeled as an ideal
reactive power injection at bus i. The value is between 100 MVAR to 100 MVAR.

IV. Simulation Results

In order to test the activeness of propound technique
the modified IEEE 30 bus system without shunt
capacitors is used shown in Fig 10.GA parameters for
single objective optimization are
Population Size: 40, maximum no of generations:
200, crossover probability: 0.95: mutation probability:
0.001: and elitism index: 0.15
Different operating conditions are simulated to check
the validity of proposed algorithm to find out the
optimal location. The study considers three cases, BL as
objective, VS as objective and Loss minimization as
objective with base case and 130% loading with and
without FACTS.
Comparative analysis of results with base case is
tabulated. Base case here refers to load flow solution
without any optimization objective. Fifteen runs are
performed and the results presented are the best out of
15.

Table 1: Objective Function values with 130% loading

Objective Function

Base case

130% loading with FACTS devices

BL objective

VS objective

LM objective

Branch Loading (BL)

2537.32

2837.109

2289.215

2145.3538

Voltage Stability (VS)

1310.25

1329.838

1389.583

1023.693

Loss minimization

0.190

0.210

0.193

0.179

Table 1 indicates the objective function values for

three objectives optimized individually for base load
and 130% loading. It is clear that that with BL as
objective the value has increased by 11.8% from base
Copyright 2014 MECS

case and with VS as objective the Value of VS function

has increased by 14.2% and with LM as objective LM
function has reduced by 6%.

I.J. Intelligent Systems and Applications, 2014, 03, 69-75

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Application of GA for Optimal Location of

FACTS Devices for Steady State Voltage Stability Enhancement of Power System

Table 2: Optimized type, location and rating of FACTS devices for

BL as objective at 130% loading loading

4.1 Branch Loading Objective

Taking branch loading as the objective function the
type, location and rating of TCSC and SVC is
determined and the best solution obtained as shown in
Table 2. Fig 2 and Fig 3 shows the graph of error Vs no.
of generations and objective function value Vs no of
generation.

Type of device

Location

Rating

SVC

25

-0.005275

TCSC

Line 40

-0.11868

Table 3: Lines to be overloaded with 130 % loading with and without FACTS
Spq
in
Base
case

Spq
in
130%
loading

Spq
After
including
FACTS
devices

Spq
max
Through
lines

Line
loading
in
Base
case

Line
loading
with
130%
loading

Line
loading
after
including
FACTS
devices

Line

From

To

No.

Bus

Bus

1.0944

1.6385

1.2356

1.3

84.183

126.036

95.046

0.4955

0.777

0.7682

1.3

38.117

59.7715

59.6655

0.3065

0.429

0.4194

0.65

47.1559

65.9961

66.1008

0.4597

0.7135

0.7121

1.3

35.3577

54.8819

54.7769

0.6062

0.8657

0.8524

1.3

46.6276

66.5947

66.5276

0.3857

0.5667

0.5592

0.65

59.3388

87.1786

87.579

0.3862

0.6189

0.6226

0.9

42.9084

68.7635

69.8429

0.1864

0.272

0.1616

0.7

26.6318

38.8503

37.7972

0.3577

0.4748

0.4675

1.3

27.5151

36.525

36.4473

10

0.1638

0.3551

0.3132

0.32

51.1727

110.97

97.875

11

0.1446

0.2328

0.2207

0.65

22.2527

35.8213

34.5275

12

10

0.1831

0.2391

0.1692

0.32

57.2275

74.713

72.1731

Table 3 indicates that the lines 1 and 10 are

overloaded without the introduction of FACTS devices
and the line loading has been decreased appreciably and
power flow is also within limits with the optimal
insertion of FACTS devices.

Fig. 3: Objective function Vs Generations

4.2 Line Outage

Line 5 outage
Fig. 2: Error Vs no. of generations

Copyright 2014 MECS

With the line 5outage is there, the lines 6 and 8 are

loaded by 105.4285% and 117.7534% respectively.
This overloading can be relieved by placing SVC at 11th
bus with Bsvc of -0.375057 and three TCSC devices in
lines 14,23 and 11 with XTCSC of -0.080656,-0.008245
and -0.024216 respectively. Table 4 shows the
comparative analysis of objective function values with
I.J. Intelligent Systems and Applications, 2014, 03, 69-75

Application of GA for Optimal Location of

FACTS Devices for Steady State Voltage Stability Enhancement of Power System

73

base case and with optimization. Fig 4 shows the error

and generation graph and Fig 5 shows the graph
between fitness value Vs generation.

Fig. 5: Fitness Vs Generation with BL as objective

.
Fig. 4: Error Vs Generations with line 5 outage

Table 4: Comparison of objective function values when line 5 given outage with and without FACTS devices at 130% loading
Objective Function

Base case

130% loading with FACTS devices

BL objective

VS objective

LM objective

Branch Loading (BL)

25.0162

482.06

486.112

483.393

Voltage Stability (VS)

121.1703

242.7302

314.50

248.74

Loss minimization

0.1691

0.170

0.170

0.167

Line 36 outage
When the line 36 given outage then lines 27, 30, 31
and 33 are loaded by 116.3357%, 103.8337%,
117.1324% and 127.7935% respectively. This
overloading can be relieved by placing SVC at 1st bus
with Bsvc of 0.244239 and two TCSC devices in lines 31

and 33 with XTCSC of -0.346388 and -0.325978

respectively. Table 5 shows the comparison of objective
function values with base case and with optimization.
Fig 6. shows the graph of fitness Vs generations with
BL as objective.

Table 5: Comparison of objective function values when line 36 given outage with and without FACTS devices at 130% loading
Line 36 outage with FACTS devices
Objective Function

Line 36 is outage
BL objective

VS objective

LM objective

Branch Loading (BL)

60.8893

621.8524

601.7279

612.98

Voltage Stability (VS)

183.7809

302.0251

309.2734

295.91

Loss Minimization

0.12553

0.128988

0.127814

0.1238

4.3 Voltage Stability as Objective

Taking voltage stability as the objective function the
type, location and rating of TCSC and SVC is
determined and the best solution obtained as shown in
table 6. Fig 7 shows the graph of objective function and
no of generation and Fig 8 indicates the graph of error
of 1st and last generation and no of generations and with
FACTS controller at optimal location. Table 7 shows
the improvement in voltage profile of weak buses with
the insertion of SVC at location 18 with rating -0.2668.

Fig. 6: Fitness Vs Generations

Copyright 2014 MECS

I.J. Intelligent Systems and Applications, 2014, 03, 69-75

74

Application of GA for Optimal Location of

FACTS Devices for Steady State Voltage Stability Enhancement of Power System

Table 6: Optimized type, location and rating of FACTS devices for

VS as objective function at 130 % loading
Type of device

Location

Rating

SVC

18

-0.2668

Results indicate that by proper placement of FACTS

devices, losses are reduced considerably.
Table 8: Power loss at 130 % loading
Active power
loss without
FACTS

Reactive loss
without
FACTS

Active loss
with
FACTS

Reactive loss
with
FACTS

0.181

0.495

0.179

0.4007

Table 9: Optimized type, location and rating of device at 130%

loading with loss minimization as objective
Type of device

Location

Rating

TCSC

22

0.03387

Fig. 7: Objective functions versus no of generation

Table 7: Voltage profile with FACTS

Bus No

Without facts at
130%loading

With TCSC and SVC at

optimal location

26

0.8921

0.95366

30

0.8902

0.95909

21

0.9171

0.978
Fig. 9: Error Vs No of generation

V.

Conclusion

Taking Loss minimization as the objective function

the type, location and rating of TCSC and SVC is
determined and the best solution obtained as shown in
table IX. Fig 9 shows the error between fitness value of
1st iteration and last iteration. Table VIII shows the
active and reactive losses with FACTS controller.
Results indicate that by proper placement of FACTS
devices, losses are reduced considerably.

Acknowledgments
Fig. 8: Error versus no of generation for voltage Stability as objective

4.4 Loss Minimization as Objective

The authors would like to thank the anonymous

reviewers for their careful reading of this paper and for
their helpful comments.

Taking Loss minimization as the objective function

the type, location and rating of TCSC and SVC is
determined and the best solution obtained as shown in
table IX. Fig 9 shows the error between fitness value of
1st iteration and last iteration. Table VIII shows the
active and reactive losses with FACTS controller.
Copyright 2014 MECS

I.J. Intelligent Systems and Applications, 2014, 03, 69-75

Application of GA for Optimal Location of

FACTS Devices for Steady State Voltage Stability Enhancement of Power System

75

[9] Lijun Cai and Istvan Erlich, Optimal Choice and

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Fig 10: IEEE 30 bus system

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Authors Profiles
Anju Gupta (1975 ),Female,India,Associate
Professor in YMCA University of Science and
Technology, M.Tech from N.I.T,Kurukshetra,Pursuing
Ph.D, her research directions include AI tools in power
system optimization, Optimal control, Optimal location
of FACTS Devices.

P.R.Sharma (1966 ), male, India, Professor, in

YMCA University of Science and Technology,
Currently guiding many Ph.D Scholars, his research
directions include Power System Stability, Congestion
Management, Optimal location and coordinated control
of FACTS devices.

I.J. Intelligent Systems and Applications, 2014, 03, 69-75