AN EFFICIENT ALGORITHM FOR POWER

SYSTEM OSCILLATION DAMPING USING

TCSC CONTROLLER
R.Sasikala
Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Oxford engineering College
sasi_142k6@yahoo.co.in
Abstract -This project presents a systematic procedure for
modeling, simulation and optimal tuning the parameters of a
TCSC controller, for the power system stability enhancement.
For the simulation purpose, the model of single machine
infinite bus power system with TCSC controller is developed
in MATLAB/SIMULINK. The design problem of TCSC
controller is formulated as an optimization problem and
simulated annealing algorithm is employed to search for the
optimal TCSC controller parameters. By minimizing the
objective function the stability performance of the power
system is improved. The results are obtained from
simulations validate the effectiveness of proposed modeling
and tuning approach for power system stability
improvement. The simulation results also show that the
proposed TCSC controller is effective in damping the power
system oscillations.

Keywords Thyristor Controlled Switched Capacitor,

Simulated Annealing, Power system stability, Power system
oscillations, Damping controller.

I.
INTRODUCTION
Power system oscillatory stability refers to the
damping of electro mechanical oscillations occurring in
power systems with oscillation frequency in the range of
0.2 Hz to 2Hz. Low frequency oscillations are observed
when large power systems are interconnected by relatively
weak tie lines. These oscillations may sustain and grow to
cause system separation if no adequate damping is
available. Low frequency oscillations occur due to
inadequate damping torque in generators, causing both
local mode oscillations (1.0Hz-2.0Hz), Inter area mode
oscillations (0.2Hz-1.0Hz). These low frequency
oscillations are the consequence of the development of
interconnection of large power systems. Low frequency
oscillations in a power system constraints the capability of
power transmission, threatens system security, and
damages the efficient operation of the power system. Since
system damping is small at best, it is reasonable to use
new devices for more damping.
In recent years, the fast progress in the field of
power electronics has opened new opportunities for the
power industry via utilization of the controllable facts

devices like UPFC, TCSC which offer an alternative

means to mitigate power system oscillations. These
devices with suitable controllable scheme can improve
transient stability and help to damp power system
oscillations. Developments of power electronics introduce
the use of flexible ac transmission system controllers in
power systems. Facts controllers are capable of controlling
the network condition in a very fast manner and this
feature of FACTS can be exploited to improve the stability
of a power system.
With the FACTS technology initiative variable
series compensation is highly effective in both controlling
power flow in the transmission line and in improving
stability. TCSC is one of the important members of
FACTS family that is increasingly applied with long
transmission lines by the utilities in modern power
systems. It can have various roles in the operation and
control of power systems, such as scheduling power flow,
decreasing unsymmetrical components, reducing net loss,
providing voltage support, limiting short circuit
currents ,mitigating sub synchronous resonance, damping
the power oscillation, and enhancing transient stability.
When a TCSC is present in a power system to control the
power flow, a damping controller could be designed to
modulate the TCSC reactance during small disturbances in
order to improve damping of system oscillations.
This project presents a new approach to the
implementation of the Facts devices based on a single
machine power system. The single machine infinite bus
system is designed using the transfer function approach.
Thyristor controlled series compensator has been used for
damping low frequency oscillation in a single machine
infinite bus power system. The TCSC controller parameters
are optimized using a simulated annealing algorithm. The
simulation process is carried out using
MATLAB/SIMULINK. The system response with and
without optimization is compared to get an idea about their
effectiveness in damping system oscillations.

II.

THYRISTOR CONTROLLED SERIES

COMPENSATOR (TCSC)

TCSC is one of the most important and best

known FACTS devices, which has been in use for many
years to increase line power transfer as well as to enhance
system stability. The main circuit of a TCSC is shown in
Fig. 1. The TCSC consists of three main components:
capacitor bank C, bypass inductor L and bidirectional
thyristors SCR1 and SCR2. The firing angles of the
thyristors are controlled to adjust the TCSC reactance in
accordance with a system control algorithm, normally in
response to some system parameter variations. According
to the variation of the thyristor firing angle or conduction
angle, this process can be modelled as a fast switch
between corresponding reactance offered to the power
system.

III. MODELLING OF POWER SYSTEM WITH TCSC

The single-machine infinite-bus power system
shown in Fig. 6 is considered. The generator is equipped
with a PSS and the system has a TCSC installed in
transmission line. In the figure XT and XL represent the
reactance of the transformer and the transmission line
respectively, VT and VB are the generator terminal and
infinite bus voltage respectively.

Fig: 2 Single machine infinite bus power systems with TCSC

A. Non-Linear Equations
When the thyristors are fired, the TCSC can be
mathematically described as follows:

Where iC and iL are the instantaneous values of the currents

in the capacitor banks and inductor, respectively; iS the
instantaneous current of the controlled transmission line; v
is the instantaneous voltage across the TCSC. Assuming
that the total current passing through the TCSC is
sinusoidal; the equivalent reactance at the fundamental
frequency can be represented as a variable reactance XTCSC.
The TCSC can be controlled to work either in the
capacitive or the inductive zones avoiding steady state
resonance. This mode is called venire control mode. There
exists a steady-state relationship between the firing angle
and the reactance XTCSC. This relationship can be described
by the following equation

Where,
Xc = Nominal reactance of the fixed capacitor C.
Xp = Inductive reactance of inductor L connected in
parallel with C.
= 2(-) = Conduction angle of TCSC controller

The non-linear differential equations of the SMIB

system with TCSC are derived by neglecting the
resistances of all components of the system (generator,
transformer and transmission lines) and the transients of
the transmission lines and transformer. The non-linear
differential equations are:

(1)
Where,

Fig: 3 Simplified IEEE type excitation systems

The simplified IEEE Type-ST1A excitation

system is considered. The diagram of the IEEE TypeST1A excitation system is shown in Fig. 7. The inputs to
the excitation system are the terminal voltage VT and
reference voltage VR. The gain and time constants of the
excitation system are represented by KA and TA
respectively.
B. Linearized Equations
In the design of electromechanical mode damping
stabilizer, a linearized incremental model around an
operating point is usually employed. The Phillips-Heffron
model of the power system with FACTS devices is
obtained by linearizing the set of equations (1) around an
operating condition of the power system. The linearized
expressions are as follows:

(2)
Where,

The single-machine infinite-bus (SMIB) power

system model with TCSC-based damping controller is
obtained using linearized equation set (2). The
corresponding block diagram model is shown in Fig. 8.

Fig. 4 Block diagram of the linearized power system model of SMIB

with TCSC-based supplementary damping controller

C.

Structure of Proposed TCSC Damping

Controller
The commonly used leadlag structure is chosen
in this study as a TCSC controller. The structure of the
TCSC controller is shown in Fig. 9. It consists of a gain
block with gain KT, a signal washout block and two-stage
phase compensation block as shown in figure. The phase
compensation block provides the appropriate phase-lead
characteristics to compensate for the phase lag between
input and the output signals. The signal washout block
serves as a high-pass filter, with the time constant TW, high
enough to allow signals associated with oscillations in
input signal to pass unchanged. Without it steady changes
in input would modify the output. From the viewpoint of
the washout function, the value of TW is not critical and
may be in the range of 1 to 20 seconds.

Fig. 5 Structure of the TCSC controller

The damping torque contributed by the TCSC can

be considered to be in to two parts. The first part KP,
which is referred as the direct damping torque, is directly
applied to the electromechanical oscillation loop of the
generator. The second part KQ and KV, named as the
indirect damping torque, applies through the field channel
of the generator. The damping torque contributed by
TCSC controller to the electromechanical oscillation loop
of the generator is:
TD = TD0= KPKTKD
Where, TD is the damping torque coefficient.
The transfer function of the TCSC controller is:

Where, u and y are the TCSC controller output and input

signals, respectively. In this structure, Tw is usually
prespecified and is taken as 5 s. Also, two similar lag-lead
compensators are assumed so that T1=T3 and T2=T4. The
controller gain KT and time constants T1 and T2 are to be
determined. In this study, the input signal of the proposed
TCSC controller is the speed deviation and the output
is change in conduction angle . During steady state
conditions = 0 and XEff = XT+XL-XTCSC(0). During
dynamic conditions the series compensation is modulated
for damping system oscillations. The effective reactance in
dynamic conditions is: XEff = XT+XL-XTCSC (), where =
0+ and =2(-), 0 and 0 being initial value of firing
& conduction angle respectively.
IV.

SIMULATED ANNEALING ALGORITHM

A. Overview
Simulated annealing is a derivative-free
optimization technique that simulates the physical
annealing process in the field of combinatorial
optimization. Annealing is the physical process of heating
up a solid until it melts, followed by slow cooling it down
by decreasing the temperature of the environment in steps.
At each step, the temperature is maintained constant for a
period of time sufficient for the solid to reach thermal
equilibrium. At any temperature, the thermal equilibrium
state is characterized by the Boltzmann distribution. This
distribution gives the probability of the solid being in a
state with energy at temperature T as
Pi = k exp (-Ei/T)
Where, k is a constant.
Metropolis proposed a Monte Carlo method to
simulate the process of reaching thermal equilibrium at a
fixed value of the temperature T. In this method, a
randomly generated perturbation of the current
configuration of the solid is applied so that a trial
configuration is obtained. Let Ec and Et denote the energy
level of the current and trial configurations respectively. If
Et < Ec, then a lower energy level has been reached, and
the trial configuration is accepted and becomes the current
configuration. On the other hand, if E t>=Ec the trial
configuration is accepted as current configuration with
probability proportional to exp (-E/T), E=E t-Ec. The
process continues until the thermal equilibrium is achieved
after a large number of perturbations, where the
probability of a configuration approaches Boltzmann
distribution.
By gradually decreasing the temperature T and
repeating Metropolis simulation, new lower energy levels
become achievable. As T approaches zero least energy
configurations will have a positive probability of
occurring.

B. Simulated Annealing Algorithm

At first, the analogy between a physical annealing
process and a combinatorial optimization problem is based
on the following
Solutions in an optimization problem are
equivalent to configurations of a physical system.
The cost of a solution is equivalent to the energy
of a configuration.
In addition, a control parameter Cp is introduced
to play the role of the temperature T.
The basic elements of SA are briefly stated and defined as
follows: Current, trial, and best solutions, xcurrent, xtrial, and xbest
These solutions are sets of the optimized
parameter values at any iteration.
Acceptance criterion:
At any iteration, the trial solution can be accepted
as the current solution if it meets one of the following
criteria;
a)J(xtrial) < J(xcurrent);
b) J(xtrial) > J(xcurrent)
and exp (-(J(xtrial) - J(xcurrent))/Cp>= rand (0,1).
Here, rand (0, 1) is a random number with
domain [0, 1] and J(xtrial) and J(xcurrent) are the objective
function values associated with and respectively. Criterion
(b) indicates that the trial solution is not necessarily
rejected if its objective function is not as good as that of
the current solution with hoping that a much better
solution become reachable.
Acceptance ratio:
At a given value of Cp, an n1 trial solution can be
randomly generated. Based on the acceptance criterion, an
n2 of these solutions can be accepted. The acceptance ratio
is defined as n2/n1.
Cooling schedule:
It specifies a set of parameters that governs the
convergence of the algorithm. This set includes an initial
value of control parameter Cp0, a decrement function for
decreasing the value of Cp, and a finite number of
iterations or transitions at each value of Cp i.e. the length
of each homogeneous Markov chain. The initial value of
Cp should be large enough to allow virtually all transitions
to be accepted. However, this can be achieved by starting
off at a small value of Cp0 and multiplying it with a
constant larger than 1, i.e. Cp0 = Cp0. This process
continues until the acceptance ratio is close to 1. This is
equivalent to heating up process in physical systems. The
decrement function for decreasing the value of Cp is given
by Cp=Cp where is a constant smaller than but close to
1. Typical values lie between 0.80.99.
Equilibrium condition:
It occurs when the current solution does not
change for a certain number of iterations at a given value
of Cp. It can be achieved by generating a large number of
transitions at that value.

 Stopping criteria:
These are the conditions under which the search
process will terminate. In this study, the search will
terminate if one of the following criteria is satisfied:
a) The number of Markov chains since the last
change of the best solution is greater than a pre
specified number; or,
b) The number of Markov chains reaches the
maximum allowable number.
C. General algorithm:
The general algorithm of SA can be described in steps as
follows:
Step 1)
Set the initial value of Cp0 and randomly generate
an initial solution xinitial and calculate its objective function.
Set this solution as the current solution as well as the best
solution, i.e. xinitial = xcurrent, = xbest.
Step 2)
Randomly generate an n1 of trial solutions in the
neighborhood of the current solution.
Step 3)
Check the acceptance criterion of these trial
solutions and calculate the acceptance ratio. If acceptance
ratio is close to 1 go to step 4; else set
Cp0 = Cp0, >1, and go back to step 2.
Step 4)
Set the chain counter kch = 0.
Step 5)
Generate a trial solution xtrial. If xtrial satisfies the
acceptance criterion set xcurrent = xtrial,J (xcurrent) = J(xtrial) ,
and go to step 6; else go to step 6.
Step 6)
Check the equilibrium condition. If it is satisfied
go to step 7; else go to step 5.
Step 7)
Check the stopping criteria. If one of them is
satisfied then stop; else set kch = kch + l and Cp = Cp, and
go back to Step 5.
D. Objective Function
It is worth mentioning that the TCSC controller
are designed to minimize the power system oscillations
after a disturbance so as to improve the stability. These
oscillations are reflected in the deviations in the generator
rotor speed (). In the present study the objective
function J is formulated as the minimization of
np
J=

(0 i,j)2
J=1 i,j 0
KT
T1
The value of 0 represents the
desirable level of system
0.343
0.252
damping. This level can be
achieved by shifting the
dominant eigen values to the left of S= 0 line in the S-

plane. This insures also some degree of relative stability.

The condition
is imposed on J evaluation to
consider only the unstable or poorly damped modes which
are mainly belonging to the electromechanical ones. The
problem constraints are the TCSC parameter bounds.
Therefore, the design problem can be formulated as the
following optimization problem.
Minimize
J

Subject to
KTmin KT KTmax
T1min T1 T1max
T2 min T2 T2max

The proposed approach employs SA algorithm to solve

this optimization problem and search for optimal or near
optimal set of TCSC parameters.
E. Problem formulation
In our project we consider three parameters to be
minimized so that the damping is perfect. Our aim is to
maintain the roots in the left half of the s plane. More over
the roots should be sufficiently towards the infinity. . A
system with s=-3, will offer better stability than with s=-1.
Because even if the load fluctuations or speed deviation
will not affect the system badly and the damping will be
faster. So here we concentrate on how to minimize the
value of J for an optimum value of sigma.
For objective function calculation, the timedomain simulation of the power system model is carried
out for the simulation period. It is aimed to minimize this
objective function in order to improve the system response
in terms of the settling time and overshoots. The task in
SA algorithm is that we have to get the minimum damping
from the controllers. This is analogous to the minimum
energy reached by the system with respect to cooling
schedule.
APPLICATION OF SA TO THE PROPOSED CONTROL
SCHEMES
Simulated Annealing Algorithm has been applied
to search for optimal settings of the optimized parameters
of the proposed control schemes. In our implementation,
the search will terminate if the stopping criteria is
achieved. The stopping criterion is occurring when set no
of iterations and consecutive rejections are reached. The
final setting of the optimized parameters is given in the
Table1.
T3
0.1281

Optimal settings of the TCSC controller parameters

A. Test system

When the number of iterations reaches the set

number or the consecutive rejections occur, then we stop
the process and display the best solutions and its value.
C. Flow chart

Fig. 11 Single machine infinite bus system

A 1000 MW hydraulic generation plant (M1) is

connected to a load center through a long500Kv, 700 km
transmission line. The load center is modeled by a 5000
MW resistive load. The load is fed by the remote
1000MVA plant. A load flow has been performed on this
system with plant M1 generating 950 MW. The line carries
944 MW which is close to its surge impedance loading. To
maintain system stability after faults, the transmission line
is series compensated at its center by Thyristor controlled
switched compensator. The machine is equipped with a
hydraulic turbine and governor (HTG), Excitation system,
and power system stabilizer.
B. Proposed algorithm:
Step 1:
The solutions are randomly generated for the
objective function.
Fig. 10 Flow chart for simulated annealing algorithm
Step 2:
VI. SIMULATION RESULTS
If the solutions results in the condition that new
energy < min F, then stop the iterations and display the
solutions and the value of the objective function. New
energy is the value of object function for different
solutions. Old energy is the same but in the previous
iteration. Min F refers to inf.
Step 3:
If the new energy is less than the previous energy
also the solution is accepted, the previous solutions are
actually replaced by the current solution which satisfies
the best minimum case.
Step 4:
If the randomly generated solutions does not give
the minimum answer in the objective function then the
solutions are rejected.
Step 5:
Such rejections are counted by a counter.
Step 6:
The acceptance probability function P(e,e',T) was
defined as 1 if e' < e, and exp((e e') / T) otherwise.
Probability of acceptance is 1 only when the new energy is
less than old energy.
Step 7:
The solution is accepted even when
rand < exp( (old energy new energy)/(k*T) )
Step 8:

Power deviation without controller

Power deviation with TCSC controller

Transmission line:
Re = 0.02, Xe = 0.8
Excitation Systems:
KA = 200, TA = 0.001S, KF = 0.001,TF = 0.1S
REFERENCES
TCSC reactance (reference and measured)

[1]
[2]

[3]
[4]
[5]

Deviation in power angle with controller

VII.

CONCLUSION
A method to analyze power system damping
enhancement by the application of TCSC has been
developed and tested in a single machine infinite bus
system. Power system based controllers can damp the
oscillations effectively only the particular operating
conditions. In addition with FACTS devices can damp the
oscillations effectively all operating conditions. From the
result it is evident that the settling time and overshoot
greatly reduced when using facts devices. The TCSC
controller design problem is formulated as an optimization
problem. Then, Simulated Annealing algorithm has been
proposed to search for optimal settings of controller
parameters. The proposed approach has been applied to
single machine power systems with different loading
conditions and system configurations. The simulation
results shows that, the TCSC controller provides good
damping of low frequency oscillations and improves
greatly the voltage profile. The analysis reveals the
effectiveness of the proposed SATCSC to damp out local
as well as inter area modes of oscillation. The non linear
time domain simulation results show that, the proposed
SATCSCs work effectively over a wide range of loading
conditions and system configurations.

[6]
[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]

[14]

APPENDIX
System data:
Generator:
H = 3.7S, Xd = 1.305, Xd= 0.296, Xq = 0.474, Xq = 0.243
Xl(leakage) = 0.18 ,Td = 5.95, Tq = 0.1

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