Enhancement of available transfer capability using TCSC devices in deregulated power market

Electric power sector restructuring is a worldwide phenomenon and the format in which it is happening varies according to the economy and political setup of the country. The concept of deregulation introduces open access to the market and develops competition among the market participants. Thus, there is a need to develop a less dominant and transparent market to those participants. The technical challenges associated with the deregulated environment are transmission pricing, congestion management and available transfer capability. This paper concentrates on one of the technical challenges as Available Transfer Capability (ATC). This ATC value has to be updated instantly for making decisions on the system capacity reservations and transactions. The ATC, an essential indicator of the transmission system behaviour, has been formulated using linear sensitivity based AC Power Transfer Distribution Factor (ACPTDF) method in this work. This paper presents the significance of Thyristor Controlled Series Capacitor (TCSC) device in ATC enhancement with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm employed to obtain the optimum value of TCSC device parameter. The results are presented for the sample 6-bus system and IEEE 30-bus system considered.