1

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

1.1

INTRODUCTION
As power systems become more complex and more heavily loaded,

voltage instability and voltage collapse have become increasingly serious

problems. Thus voltage stability and voltage collapse threaten power system
reliability and security. Voltage stability problems are often associated with
contingencies like unexpected line and generator outages, insufficient local
reactive power supply and increased loading of the transmission lines. A
power system at a current operation point is voltage stable if, following any
disturbance, voltages near loads are close to the pre-disturbance values. The
main factor causing voltage instability is the inability of the power system to
meet the demands for reactive power in the heavily stressed systems. Voltage
security needs to be addressed in the planning, operational and monitoring
phases of power system.
Understanding and visualizing voltage collapse mechanisms
suggests approaches for preventive actions to avoid voltage collapse and
emergency or corrective actions to restore stability if voltage collapse begins.
This chapter explains the voltage security assessment and enhancement in
power system. The objective, literature review and organization of the thesis
are also presented in this chapter.

1.2

VOLTAGE STABILITY PHENOMENA

Voltage stability problems normally occur in heavily stressed

systems. In recent years, a number of voltage instability incidents have

occurred around the world. Voltage collapse phenomenon follows voltage
instability, and it is often the result of the action of voltage control devices,
load tap changers, the voltage dependence characteristics of the load, the
generator reactive power limits or the combination of several of them. Most
voltage collapse incidents have followed from major disturbances such as the
loss of transmission or generation equipment. It is characterized by a
continuous decrease of the system voltage. In the initial stage the decrease of
the system voltage starts gradually and then decreases rapidly. Among the
factors influencing system voltage stability, load characteristics are the most
important and direct one.

Although voltage collapse is complex, some

behavior can be understood by studying the steady state voltage profile under
various loading levels. Maintaining adequate voltage stability level has
become a major problem because many utilities are squeezing the maximum
possible capacity from their bulk transmission network to avoid the capital
cost of building new lines and generation facilities. A common measure of
static voltage stability is MW/MVAr distance to point of collapse. Q-V and PV curves are commonly used methods for static voltage stability studies. The
shape of the P-V curve (Mansour 1994) shown in Figure 1.1 is similar to that
of a parabola. The knee point of this parabola gives the critical loading of the
bus. The distance between the operating point and the knee point gives the
voltage stability margin in MW for the given load factor (Van cutsen and
Vournas 1998). Voltage stability has been defined in terms of ability to
maintain voltage so that when load admittance is increased, load power will
increase and so both the power and voltage are controllable. The curve shows
the bus voltage as a function of total load. The tip of the curve is associated
with voltage collapse. Voltage and power are controllable in the upper region

of the P-V curve. Assuming a contingency such as loss of a line occurs at the
base case loading and the system destabilizes after the transients, the voltage
profile as a function of loading will move to the contingency state. It can be
seen that the nose point moves to a lower loading and the loading margin is
reduced.

Figure 1.1 P-V curves

Thus, the behavior of the system voltage is illustrated by a typical powervoltage curve, in which the voltage at a bus is plotted as a function of the
system real power demand. i.e a voltage collapse is said to have occurred
when the system reaches the point of maximum power transfer. When no
more power can be transmitted through the network to the load, the system
dynamics react to cause the voltage to decrease rapidly. P-V curves of this
type are used frequently by utilities to study the effect of varied system
loading patterns on voltage and to predict the occurrence of potentially low
voltages.

1.3

VOLTAGE STABILITY ANALYSIS

Voltage stability is indeed a dynamic phenomenon and can be

studied using extended transient/midterm stability simulations. However, such

simulations do not readily provide sensitivity information or degree of
stability. Also they are time consuming in terms of CPU time. Therefore the
application of dynamic simulation is limited to investigation of specific
voltage collapse situation, including fast or transient voltage collapse, and for
coordination of protection and controls. Voltage stability analysis often
requires examination of a wide range of system conditions and a large number
of contingency scenarios. For such application, the approach based on steady
state analysis is more attractive and, if used properly, can provide much
insight into the voltage security problem. Static analysis involves only the
solution of algebraic equations and therefore is computationally much more
efficient than dynamic analysis. Power system operators use various
analytical tools for analysis of static voltage stability using load flow solution
or output from static state estimation. The analytical tools are
V-P (nose) curves or P-V curves (Tiranuchit.A and Thomas
R.J 1998).
Sensitivity Indices. Sensitivity of bus voltage magnitude for
active (P) and reactive (Q) injection at a bus (Overbye.T. J.
and DeMarco.C. L 1991).
Sensitivity of net reactive power generation for a given bus
reactive power injection. (N.Flatabo et.al. 1990)
Minimum Singular Value Decomposition of the complete load
flow Jacobian as well as reduced Jacobian formulations.(Gao
et.al. 1992)

Voltage Stability Index L proposed by (Kessel and Glavitsch

1986).
1.4

VOLTAGE SECURITY ASSESSMENT

Security assessment is performed to determine whether, and to

what extent, a power system is reasonably safe from interference to its

operation. Thus, it involves the estimation of the relative robustness of the
system in its present state or in the near- term future state. Voltage security
assessment provides proximity to voltage instability and determines the
mechanism of voltage instability. For the secure operation of the system
following a contingency, the N-1 contingency (Ejbee G.C and Wollenberg
B.F 1998, Xiaosong 2008) rule is generally used. This means that the system
should operate within limits, following the severe contingency that is
identified around the operating scenario.

Power systems are subject to

contingencies like line outages, generator outages, etc. Contingency analysis

is one of the most important functions performed in power systems to
establish appropriate preventive and/ or corrective actions for each
contingency. The system is said to be voltage secure, if it has a sufficient
loading margin even after a credible contingency has occurred. The line
outages are the most frequently occurring contingency in power systems.
Hence, only the transmission line outages are considered in this work.
Contingency analysis procedure consists of a line contingency analysis with
the detection of overloaded lines and bus voltage violations, and the ranking
of severe contingency cases. The lines are ranked according to the severity of
the contingency. In this work, the severity of the contingency is evaluated
from the voltage security point of view, in terms if its voltage violations and
reduced load margin. The planning of a power system to ensure operation at
minimum cost is very complex problem with a potential for enormous
financial gain in the solution. The security analysis is required to guarantee

the power systems secure operation in all conditions and at all operating
points. In this thesis the security assessment is studied by using L-index
method. L index is proposed as a good voltage stability indicator with its
value change between zero (no load) and one (voltage collapse) (Kessel and
Glavitsch 1986). Moreover, it can be used as a quantitative measure to
estimate the voltage stability margin against the operating point.
1.5

EVOLUTIONARY ALGORITHMS
Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) (Fonseca and Fleming 1995) are

stochastic and direct search optimization algorithms which are inspired by the
process of natural evolution. Most of the EAs descend from Genetic
Algorithm, Evolutionary strategies and Evolutionary programming which
work independently with developed approaches. All these algorithms work on
the basis of organic evolution models.
EAs differ from other optimization methods in possessing the
following features:
EAs search from a population of points and not a single point.
The population can move over hills and across valleys. EAs
can, therefore discover a globally or near globally optimum
point. The computation for each individual in the population is
independent of others, since it has inherent parallel
computation ability.
EAs use information directly for search direction, not
derivatives or other auxiliary knowledge. EAs, therefore can
deal with non-smooth, non-continuous and non-differentiable
functions that are the real life optimization problems.
EAs use probabilistic transition rules not deterministic rules,
to select generations, so they are a kind of stochastic

optimization algorithm, which can search a complicated and

uncertain area to find the optimal global solution. In general
EAs are more flexible and robust than conventional methods.
In this thesis Genetic Algorithms and Particle Swarm Optimization
evolutionary approaches are used for solving the voltage security
enhancement problems.
1.5.1

Genetic Algorithms
Genetic algorithms (GA) (Goldberg 1989) are generalized search

algorithms based on the mechanics of natural selection and natural genetics.

They combine the concept of Darwins theory of the Survival of Fittest with
genetic operators. Starting with an initial population, the genetic algorithm
exploits the information contained in the present population, and explores
new individuals by generating offspring using genetic operators, which can
then replace members of the old generation. The commonly used genetic
operators are reproduction, crossover and mutation. Reproduction is usually
the first operator applied on the population. It selects individual strings in the
population according to their fitness and forms the mating pool, and so it is
also called as selection operator. Crossover is a recombination operator. In the
crossover operator, new strings are created by exchanging information among
strings of the mating pool. Mutation is a background operator which produces
spontaneous random changes in various chromosomes. The mutation is also
used to maintain the diversity in the population. After several generations, the
algorithm converges to the best solution, which hopefully represents the
optimum or near optimal solution. There are some differences between GAs
and traditional searching algorithms (Lai et.al. 1997, Chen and Chang 1995).
They could be summarized as follows:

The algorithms work with a population of strings, searching

many peaks in parallel, as opposed to a single point.
GAs work directly with strings of characters representing the
parameters set and not the parameters themselves.
GAs use probabilistic transition rules instead of deterministic
rules.
GAs use objective function information instead of derivatives
or other auxiliary knowledge.
GAs have the potential to find solutions in many different
areas of the search space simultaneously.
The working principle of a simple genetic algorithm is given in
Appendix 1. The simple genetic algorithm as described in Goldberg (1989)
has undergone several modifications for improved performance. This thesis
proposes an application of real coded genetic algorithm (Herrera et.al.1998) to
solve the voltage security enhancement problem, where crossover and
mutation operators are applied directly to real parameter values. Since real
parameters are used directly (without any string coding), solving real
parameter optimization problems is a step easier when compared to the simple
binary coded GAs. Unlike in the binary coded GAs , decision variables can be
directly used to compute the fitness values. Since selection operator works
with the fitness value, any selection operator used with simple binary coded
GAs can also be used in real parameter GAs. When an optimization problem
involves more than one objective function, the task of finding one or more
optimum solutions is known as multi- objective optimization. The working
principle of the multi objective optimization problem is given in Appendix 2.
In this thesis multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) is applied to solve
the voltage security enhancement problem.

1.5.2

Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO)

The PSO is a population based stochastic optimization technique

developed by Kennedy and Eberhart (1995). A population of particles exists

in the n-Dimensional search space. Each particle has a certain amount of
knowledge, and will move about the search space based on this knowledge.
The particle has some inertia attributed to it and so it will continue to have a
component of motion in the direction it is moving. It knows where in the
search space, it will encounter the best solution. The particle will then modify
its direction such that, it has additional components towards its own best
position, pbest and towards the overall best position, gbest. The PSO is
computationally faster and the convergence abilities of this method are better
than the other evolutionary computation techniques such as the GA. However,
unlike the GA, the PSO has no evolution operators, such as crossover and
mutation. The features of the PSO method (Yoshida et.al.2000) are as
follows:
The method is based on researchers about swarms such as fish
schooling and a flock of birds.
It is based on a simple concept. Therefore, the computation
time is short and it requires few memories.
It was originally developed for nonlinear optimization
problems with continuous variables. However, it is easily
expanded to treat problems with discrete variables. Therefore,
it is applicable to a mixed integer nonlinear optimization
problem with both continuous and discrete variables such as
Volt/VAr control in voltage security enhancement problems.

10

In this thesis PSO technique is used to solve the voltage security

enhancement problem with a corrective control strategy.
1.6

LITERATURE REVIEW
Voltage stability is a major aspect of power system security

analysis. It is becoming one of the most important problems in power systems

due to the intensive use of transmission networks. Generally, there are two
ways to provide security, namely, preventive and corrective actions. In the
preventive action, the security margin is estimated based on credible
contingencies with a reasonable probability of occurrence, and then
appropriate actions are taken by re-adjusting the most effective controls to
provide a sufficient margin when needed. System control capabilities shall
allow users to increase the stability margin under base case and contingency
state. This capability includes generation rescheduling, controlling of the
phase shifters, tap changing transformers, static VAr devices, controllable
shunts, etc. In order to avoid the stability limit being reached or exceeded
during a given contingency, remedial actions need to be taken. Corrective
actions are usually used for correction of security, acceptable only in the
presence of severe disturbances. A number of optimization techniques have
been proposed in the literature to solve these security problems. This research
reviews various optimization techniques proposed in the literature for solving
the voltage security enhancement problems.
1.6.1

Preventive action for Voltage Security Enhancement

Preventive action is carried out before the contingency occurs. It

controls the system in the pre-contingency state such that voltage stability
margins are maintained with respect to potentially dangerous contingencies.

11

Preventive action measures usually include:

Change of active power generation set-points, i.e., redispatch.
Start-up of generation units.
Change of voltage set-points of generators
Switching of shunt elements (reactors, capacitors) and
Change of voltage set-points of Static VAr Compensators
(SVC).
Optimal Power Flow (OPF) is a powerful tool for the voltage
security analysis (Carpentier 1962), and a lot of work has been done to
develop effective schemes for solving the security enhancement problem
(Abdel et.al. 2003, Geidl and Anderson 2007). Various mathematical
techniques have been proposed to solve these problems. These may be
classified as quadratic (Nejdawi et.al. 2000), linear, nonlinear (Alsac and Scot
1974), integer and dynamic programming methods, Newton-based methods
(Sun et.al. 1984), interior point methods (Momoh et.al. 1994), etc.
Quadratic

programming

is

special

form

of

nonlinear

programming where the objective function is approximated by a quadratic

function and the constraints are linearized. Nanda et.al. (1989) discussed an
OPF algorithm developed using the Fletchers quadratic programming
method. Burchett et.al. (1984) solved a successive quadratic programming
(SQP) method where the approximation-solution-update process is repeated to
convergence just as in the successive linear programming method. In this
method, sequences of quadratic programs were created from the exact
analytical first and second derivatives of the power flow equations and the
nonlinear objective function. Some disadvantages were associated with the
piecewise quadratic cost approximation.

12

Linear programming deals problems with constraints and objective

function formulated in linear forms. They have some disadvantages associated
with the piecewise linear cost approximation.
Nonlinear programming methods involved nonlinear objective and
constraint equations. They have many drawbacks such as insecure
convergence properties and algorithmic complexity. The benchmark paper by
Dommel and Tinney (1968) discussed a method to minimize fuel costs and
active power loss using the penalty function optimization approach.
Combinations of linear programming methods with the Newton approach
have also been discussed in (Maria and Findlay 1987).
Newton- based approaches have drawbacks of convergence
characteristics that are sensitive to the initial conditions and they may even
fail to converge due to the inappropriate initial conditions. Burchett and Happ
(1983) apply an optimization method based on transforming the original
problem to that of solving a series of linearly constrained subproblems using
an augmented Lagrangian type objective function. The subproblems are
optimized using quasi-Newton, conjugate directions, and steepest descent
methods.
In the competitive market environment, power systems will have to
be operated at higher loading conditions with market influences demanding
greatest attention to operating cost. This may increase the possibility of
voltage instability incidents (Kurita and Sakurai 1988). So, how to consider
voltage enhancement in the OPF formulation is a new challenge to us.
The possibility of including stability constraints into standard OPF
formulations issue (Momoh and Koessler 1997) developed a conceptual
framework (Gan et.al. 2000). The need to expand optimal power flow to
include voltage security (Vaahedi et.al. 1989) aims to achieve an optimal

13

solution of a specific objective function such as fuel cost and loss

minimization by adjusting the power system control variables while satisfying
a set of operational and physical constraints, and thus enhance the system
state stability.
The preventive approach involves taking preventive actions so as to
ensure that the operating point is sufficiently away from the point of collapse
under a set of contingencies. Under this strategy, contingency state voltage
stability levels are included as an additional constraint of the OPF problem.
It is a mixed integer nonlinear optimization problem with large number of
variables.
The voltage security is assessed via bus voltage magnitude limits in
Bertram et.al. (1989). Overbye and DeMarco (1991) proposed a method of
security enhancement by examining the sensitivity of the security margin to
various control actions by an energy band security measure to define
vulnerability to voltage instability. The potential application of this approach
within a security constrained OPF is also explained. Berizzi et.al. (1998) dealt
with the applications of steady state approaches to the voltage assessment of
the electric system and to determine the control actions suitable to avoid the
voltage collapse. Kumano et.al. (1994) proposed an on-line methodology for
the preventive control of voltage instability by promptly rescheduling control
settings to accommodate the load increase.
The

Voltage

Security

Constrained

Optimal

Power

Flow

(VSCOPF) as the objective to determine a feasible point of operation even if

any of the contingencies occur is in (Monticelli et.al. 1987). The
post-contingency state will also be feasible without limit violations. Granville
and Lima (1994) propose an approach for VSCOPF which is interpreted as a
two-stage decision process based on network losses, ramp rate limits and
prohibited zone.

14

Canizares and Rosehart (2001) describe the comparison of various

VSCOPF problems in power systems. The solution of the problems is based
upon the implementation of two optimal reactive power flow programs: the
first relevant to determine a secure state, the second relevant to attain both the
optimal and secure point. A unified OPF method (Venkatesh et.al. 2002) that
optimally schedules real and reactive power controllers maximizes the voltage
stability margin using successive linear programming. Florin Capitanescu and
Van cutsem (2002) proposed a preventive control approach to voltage security
using linear programming.
A contingency constrained OPF (Hwachang et.al.

2003) for

voltage security enhancement estimates the voltage stability margin by the

modified form of continuation power flow method and interior point method
was applied to solve this OPF problem.
Several hybrid OPF formulations incorporating voltage stability
constraints are in (Rosehart et.al. 2000 and Ramesh and Ali 2007). These
methods put requirements on evaluating the critical point of voltage stability,
so that the problem size and computation burden are enhanced. An optimal
dispatch with voltage stability constraints, using the bifurcation technique to
calculate the voltage stability margin is proposed in Wu et.al. (2007).
Kim et.al. (2001) proposed a voltage stability constrained OPF with
the modified form of the L-index as voltage stability constraints. The
modified index may be different from its initial form in indicating voltage
stability and affecting the OPF model. In this thesis the L-index method is
used to indicate the voltage stability and a novel OPF formulation that can
consider voltage security enhancement of the system is implemented. This
algorithm has an advantage that there is no necessity to calculate the critical
point. Different results are obtained in that the effective range of L-index
constraints is not as large as that of the modified form in (Kim et.al. 2001).

15

These conventional voltage security problems comprise scheduling

the power system controls to optimize a given objective function under a set
of nonlinear inequality and equality constraints. These conventional
optimization techniques used in the above literature make use of derivatives
and gradients and may lead to a local minimum. Also, many mathematical
assumptions such as convex, analytical, and differential objective functions
have to be given to simplify the problem. However, the OPF problem is an
optimization problem with, in general, non-convex, non-smooth and nondifferentiable objective functions. Hence it becomes essential to develop
optimization techniques that are efficient to overcome these drawbacks and
handle such difficulties.
Evolutionary Algorithm-based techniques, such as the Genetic
Algorithm (Devaraj 2005 and 2007, Lai et.al. 1997), Evolutionary
Programming (Wu and Ma 1995, Yuryevich and Wong 1999) and Particle
Swarm Optimization (Yoshida et.al. 2000, Gaing 2003, Abido 2002, Hirotaka
et.al. 2000, Miranda and Fonseca 2000) have been proposed to solve the
voltage security problems.
Somasundaram et.al. (2004) proposed an algorithm for solving the
security constrained optimal power flow problem through the application of
Evolutionary Programming (EP). The fitness function converges smoothly
without any oscillations. W. Ongsakul and Jirapong (2005) proposed EP
algorithm for maximizing the total transfer capability (TTC) of power
transactions, between the source and sink areas in deregulated power systems.
Chung and Li (2001) presented a Hybrid Genetic Algorithm (GA)
method to solve the OPF problem. The GA is integrated with the conventional
OPF to select the best control parameters to minimize the total generation fuel
cost and keep the power flows within the security limits. An enhanced genetic
algorithm for the solution of the OPF is in Petridis (2002).

16

Abido (2002) used the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to solve

the OPF with different objectives that reflect fuel cost minimization and
voltage profile improvement. Yoshida et.al. (2000) proposed PSO method for
reactive power and Voltage/VAr Control (VVC) considering voltage security
assessment. It determines an on-line VVC strategy with continuous and
discrete control variables such as AVR operating values of generators, tap
positions of the OLTC of transformers and the number of reactive power
compensation equipment.
The results obtained by these methods are promising and
encouraging for further research in this direction. Genetic Algorithm has been
successfully applied for solution of OPF problem as single objective
optimization approaches. In this research in chapter 2 the voltage security
constrained optimal power flow (VSCOPF) is the main method developed
under preventive control strategy to enhance the voltage security of the
system. Hence to solve this bi-objective functions multi-objective genetic
algorithm (MOGA) is used. In a multi-objective optimization, effort must be
made in finding the set of trade-off optimal solutions by considering all the
objectives to be important.
Generally, the multi-objective optimization problems are converted
to a single objective problem by linear combination of different objectives as
a weighted sum (Chang et.al. 1995). The important aspect of this weighted
sum method is that a set of non-inferior (or Pareto-optimal) solutions can be
obtained by varying the weights. Hence, this requires multiple runs as many
times as the number of desired Pareto-optimal solutions. Furthermore, this
method can not be used to find Pareto-optimal front. To avoid this difficulty,
the

- constraint (Yokoyama et.al. 1998) is used for multi-objective

optimization. This method is based on optimizing the most preferred objective

and considering the other objectives as constraints bounded by some
allowable levels. These levels are then altered to generate the entire Pareto-

17

optimal set. This approach is time consuming and tends to find weak Paretooptimal solutions. But the ability of evolutionary algorithm techniques like
genetic algorithm to find multiple optimal solutions in one single simulation
run makes them unique in solving multi-objective optimization problems
(Deb 2001).
1.6.2

Reactive Power Compensation

Reactive power compensation is an important issue in power

system. The purpose of reactive power compensation is mainly to enhance the

voltage security of the system and to minimize the losses and cost to maintain
power transmission capability. As we know, the voltage stability problem has
a close relationship with the reactive power of the system; it can be well
enhanced by the reactive power schedule (Van cutsen and Vournas 1998).
The reactive power compensation of AC system can be done using fixed
series or shunt capacitor however the slow nature of control and limits on
frequency are the drawbacks and can be overcome by FACTS devices
(Gotham and Heydt 1998 and Rajarama et.al. 1998). The new formulations
considering the voltage stability problem

are in the literature of (Vaahedi

et.al. 1999).
FACTS devices are good choice to improve the static voltage
stability in a power system, which operates near the steady state stability limit
and may reach in voltage instability of the system (Farsangi et.al. 2006 and
2007). The benefits in increasing the system transmission capacity and power
flow (Saravana et.al. 2007) controls the flexibility and rapidity by FACTS
devices. The PSO technique was used here to find the optimal location of
multi-type of FACTS devices with minimum cost of installation and to
improve the system loadability. The optimal location of SVC and other types
of shunt compensation devices for voltage stability enhancement is in
(Mansour et.al. 1994). A methodology for selection of static VAR

18

compensator location based on static voltage stability analysis of power

systems is in (Thukaram and Abraham Lohi 2000).
Also the optimal location of FACTS devices in power systems
using GA is in Gerbex et.al. (2001), Araby et.al. (2002) and Lee et.al. (1995).
Reactive power compensation is commonly addressed as a constrained single
objective optimization problem in (Miu et.al. 1997, Carlisle et.al. 1997 and
Delfanti et.al. 2000). The dispatch of reactive powers can be effectively used
to maintain acceptable voltage levels throughout the system and to reduce
overall real power loss in the system. Furthermore, the security margin of
power systems can be enlarged to reduce the possibility of voltage collapse by
providing enough reactive power. It basically consists in determining an
adequate location and size of shunt and /or series capacitor and reactor banks.
Traditionally singleobjective optimization algorithms usually provide a
unique optimal solution. On the contrary, Multi-objective Optimization
Evolutionary Algorithms independently and simultaneously optimize several
parameters turning constraints into new objective functions. As a result, a
wide set of optimal solutions (Pareto set) may be found.
In the literature, there are several papers that address the reactive
power compensation as a multi-objective problem (Rosehart et.al. 2003 and
Venkatesh et.al. 2000), yet most of them consider a linear combination of
objectives, thus leading to special cases of optimal power flow. In chapter 3
the research work presents the reactive power compensation problem as a
multi-objective problem, where the objective functions are optimized
independently, i,e it investigates the optimal location of SVC device as a real
multi-objective optimization problem.
In this research, the objective functions are as follows:
Investment cost in compensation devices such as SVC. This
VAr source has both economic and technical importance,

19

since an overcompensated power system can lead to undesired

over voltages and oscillations.
Voltage security, in order to avoid operation points that could
lead to unstable behavior of the system.
Because of the presence of conflicting multiple objectives, a multiobjective optimization problem results in a number of optimal solutions,
known as pareto-optimal solutions (Deb 2001). In a multi-objective
optimization, effort must be made in finding the set of trade-off optimal
solutions by considering all objectives to be important.
1.6.3

Corrective action for Voltage Security Enhancement

Corrective action for voltage stability is one of the issues which the

electrical utilities care most about. It is an indispensable part of the on-line

voltage stability monitoring system. It is to stabilize an unstable power
system, directing the system trajectory onto a new stable equilibrium point
shortly after a severe contingency, such as the tripping of a heavily loaded
transmission line or the outage of a large generating unit. It provides users
with the ability to increase the stability margin, or steer away from the region
of instability when certain critical contingencies occur. It can be formulated as
a static nonlinear optimization problem which can be solved by the OPF.
Generator ramp rates can significantly restrict the speed with which active
power is rerouted in the network. Hence they are taken as the additional
control variable constraint of the optimization problem for the corrective
action. The use of ramp rate constraint to simulate the unit state and
generation changes is an effective and acceptable approach in theoretical
developments of industrial processes. This constraint ensures that output from
each unit is within ramping range.

20

The corrective control is activated when a contingency has

occurred endangering voltage stability. Most of the security constrained OPF
problems has assessed the voltage security based on the indices which
depends on load bus voltage magnitudes. However voltage instability
problems have been shown to occur in systems where voltage magnitudes
never decline below acceptable limits. To measure the severity level of
voltage stability problems, a lot of performance indices have been proposed
(Mansour 1990). They could be used on-line or off-line to help the operators
to determine how close the system is to collapse. In general, these indices
aimed at defining a scalar magnitude that can be monitored as system
parameters change with fast computation speed. They include sensitivity
factors (Carpinelli et.al. 2006, Aumuller and Saha 2002) second order
performance index (Berizzi et.al. 1998), voltage instability proximity index
(Esaka et.al. 2004, Yorino et.al. 1991, Nanba et.al. 1996), singular values and
eigenvalues (Cai et.al. 2007, Wang et.al. 2001, Schlueter et.al. 2000, Greene
et.al. 1997) and so on.
Tiranuchit et.al. (1988) developed a methodology of control against
voltage instabilities based on singular value decomposition. One of the
disadvantages of the methodology is that large amount of CPU time is
required in singular value decomposition. Hawachang Song et.al. (2003)
presented a new concept of reactive reserve based contingency constrained
OPF for enhancement of voltage stability margin by increasing the minimum
eigen value of load flow Jacobian so as to maintain desired voltage profile.
Bansilal et.al. (1996) presented a nonlinear least square optimization
algorithm for voltage stability margin improvement using L-index and nonlinear least square optimization algorithm. Kessel and Glavitch (1986)
presented a voltage stability index called L-index based on the power flow
solution. This index ranges from 0 to 1. The bus with the highest L-index will

21

be the most vulnerable bus in the system. Gao et.al. (1992) developed the
modal analysis technique to compute the voltage stability level of the system.
A simple and efficient algorithm for the alleviation of line
overloads and voltage violations by corrective rescheduling is proposed in
Bijwe et.al. (1993) and the stability constrained optimal power flow in
Lukmanul et.al. (2009) considers generation rescheduling and load
curtailment as the control variables of the optimization problem. The
development of non linear methodology for evaluating load shedding as a
corrective action to improve the dynamic security of power systems when
angle or voltage instability is detected is in Enrico et.al. (2000). Yue et.al.
(2006) discussed the corrective control for the voltage stability of complex
power systems based on Primal- Dual Interior point method. Sarosh and
Ramesh (1994) dealt with control actions to counter the ill effects of sudden
disturbances. Wang et.al. (1998) solved both preventive and corrective control
problems for satisfying a certain level of the voltage stability margin, but the
condition at the base solution after applying the controls is not taken into
account. Angel et.al. (2010) present a sensitivity based heuristic tool to
determine corrective action, so as to help the system operator in the reactive
power flow control problem. An iterative approach was solved by (Florin
et.al. 2008 and 2009) with the corrective action for coupling optimization and
dynamic simulation of voltage instabilities. Generator ramp rates can
significantly restrict the speed with which active power is rerouted in the
network. In the above literature the heuristic tool used to solve these
optimization problem leads to premature convergence and degrade its
performance and reduces its search capability.
Hence in this thesis in chapter 4, Particle Swarm Optimization
(PSO) algorithm is proposed to solve the OPF optimization through corrective
control strategy of voltage security enhancement problem with the

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minimization of the maximum L-index as the objective function. PSO has

been proposed and introduced by (Kennedy 1997, Angeline 1998, Ozean et.al.
1998). This technique combines social and psychological principles in sociocognition human agents and evolutionary computations. PSO has been
motivated by the behavior of organisms such as fish schooling and bird
flocking. Generally, the PSO is characterized as simple in concept, easy to
implement, and computationally efficient. Unlike other heuristic techniques,
the PSO has a flexible and well-balanced mechanism to enhance and adapt to
the global and local exploration abilities.
1.7

ISSUES TO BE ADDRESSED IN VOLTAGE SECURITY

ENHANCEMENT
This thesis proposes a GA and PSO based method to solve the

voltage security constrained OPF problem which can be used for power
system rescheduling. The following issues are addressed in developing the
Evolutionary Algorithm- based approach to solve the voltage security
enhancement problems.
Representation of the solution
In the conventional methods, the solution variables are represented as
a continuous one. But, in practice, those values are discrete in nature, such as the
transformer tap setting and capacitor setting. So, a natural representation of the
solution variables is proposed.
Evaluation of the solution
The power system operator has the control to vary only a few
variables in the system. Some of these independent variables called control
variables will be represented as solution variables in the population. From
those candidate solutions (control variables), the dependent variables (state

23

variables) of the system have to be derived and those candidate solutions

which result in the violation of upper and lower limits of the state variables
have to be penalized to discourage the infeasible solutions.
Genetic Operators
The simple crossover and the bit mutation operators can effectively
deal with binary representation only. New crossover and mutation operators
which can effectively deal with the non-binary problem representation have to
be investigated.
1.8

OBJECTIVE OF THE WORK

Security enhancement tools can help utilities to achieve a more

secure and cost effective operation. Power system security is a very complex
multidimensional problem. It is suggested that improvements of power system
security can be achieved by complementing and/or modifying both
operational philosophy and control, which naturally includes technology and
infrastructure. However, suggestions for such improvements should be
supported by demonstration of incentives. These statements also form the
basis for the work summarized in this thesis.
The major objectives of the research work are,
Implementation of multi-objective genetic algorithm for
voltage security enhancement.
Optimal placement and sizing of SVC for voltage security
enhancement.
Inclusion of the ramp rate constraint in the contingency
control problem.

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Particle swarm optimization based corrective control approach

for voltage security enhancement.
The effectiveness and potential of the proposed algorithms have
been demonstrated using the IEEE 30-bus and IEEE 57-bus test system. Due
to increased loading of transmission networks in recent years, the need for
voltage security enhancement has increased and research has been done to
find appropriate solutions. Hence the application of Evolutionary Algorithm
based approaches appears to be more promising than classical methods. The
OPF is the main tool for security enhancement in a power system. The
methods proposed under preventive and corrective control approach are
reviewed. The limitations of the classical optimization methods have been
outlined and the suitability of Evolutionary Algorithms for security
optimization is highlighted.
1.9

ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS

The organization of the thesis is outlined as follows:

In Chapter 2 Multi-objective genetic algorithm is applied to solve
the voltage stability constraint optimal power flow problem. It outlines the
preventive control approach for voltage security enhancement. Computer
simulations are carried out on the IEEE 30-bus test system to demonstrate the
effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Chapter 3 describes the multi-objective security enhancement
problem with minimization of VAr cost and improvement of the voltage
profile as objectives. The Multi-objective genetic algorithm is used to solve
this multi-optimization problem. The performance of the proposed method is
demonstrated on the IEEE 30-bus test system. Convergence of GA is very fast
and so it is well suited for real time applications. Identifying the weak buses

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in the system and the location of SVC device is done by the voltage stability
evaluation called L-index method.
Chapter 4 The Particle swarm optimization technique is used to
solve the security enhancement problem with a corrective control strategy.
This chapter explains the problem formulation with the inclusion of the
generator ramp rate constraints. Simulation results have been obtained from
the IEEE 30-bus and IEEE 57-bus test systems to demonstrate the
effectiveness of the proposed approach to improve the voltage stability of the
system. The optimal results are presented.
Chapter 5 presents the summary of the thesis and the specific
contribution of this research work as well as the directions for future work.