Mitigation of inter area oscillations in a two area system using PSS and STATCOM

Inter Area Oscillations amounting to a major portion of the class of low frequency oscillations, are detrimental to the dynamic stability of the present day power system. Power system stabilizer (PSS) installed throughout the system aids in mitigating such oscillations. Static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) based damping controllers installed in the system also provide oscillation damping apart from their intended purpose of reactive power compensation. Hence to improve the overall performance coordinated design of PSS and STATCOM is essential. The coordinated design of power system stabilizer (PSS) and static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) for mitigation of inter area oscillations is presented in this paper. The coordinated design is formulated as an optimization problem and particle swarm optimization (PSO) is employed for this design. Then the designed PSS and STATCOM are implemented in the test system and the response is analysed. The test system is simulated with and without Power system stabilizer and static synchronous compensator. The simulation results show that the coordinated design mitigates the inter area oscillations in an effective way.