Congestion management in deregulated power system by optimal choice and allocation of FACTS controllers using multi-objective genetic algorithm

Congestion management is one of the technical challenges in power system deregulation. This paper presents single objective and multi-objective optimization approaches for optimal choice, location and size of Static Var Compensators (SVC) and Thyristor Controlled Series Capacitors (TCSC) in deregulated power system to improve branch loading (minimize congestion), improve voltage stability and reduce line losses. Though FACTS controllers offer many advantages, their installation cost is very high. Hence Independent System Operator (ISO) has to locate them optimally to satisfy a desired objective. Genetic Algorithms (GA) are best suitable for solution of combinatorial optimization and multi-objective optimization problems. This paper presents optimal location of FACTS controllers considering branch loading (BL), voltage stability (VS) and loss minimization (LM) as objectives at once using GA. It is observed that the locations that are most favorable with respect to one objective are not suitable locations with respect to other two objectives. Later these competing objectives are optimized simultaneously considering two and three objectives at a time using multi-objective Strength Pareto Evolutionary Algorithms (SPEA). The developed algorithms are tested on IEEE 30 bus system. Various cases like i) uniform line loading ii) line outage iii) bilateral and multilateral transactions between source and sink nodes have been considered to create congestion in the system. The developed algorithms show effective locations for all the cases considered for both single and multi-objective optimization studies.