Voltage Flicker Compensation of STATCOM Through Novel Bee Colony Optimization

The advent of power transmission and distribution system with the necessity of electric power is rising unprecedently. Recent studies have revealed that constant switching of heavy industrial loads has led to a serious problem termed as voltage flicker. It refers to rapid change in the voltage levels having magnitudes large enough to cause lighting flicker of incandescent lamps. Voltage flicker is a main risk for power quality in modern power systems. In order to attain better controllability and power flow, Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) controller are being primarily utilized in the electrical grid network. Static Synchronous Compensator (STATCOM) is an adaptable FACTS controller which effectively mitigates voltage flickering in order to improve the power quality. Nevertheless, the conventional PID control method is linear and is confined to a limited operating range when applied to nonlinear processes. Hence to overcome this problem, the controller parameters of PID used in STATCOM are tuned in a dynamic manner with a novel and unique evolutionary optimization method termed as `Bee Colony Optimization' (BCO). It helps in attaining much better voltage profile and power quality. For validation of the proposed approach the simulation results obtained are contrasted with the results of the traditional PID. The entire system for study have been made in Matlab/Simulink architecture. The results demonstrate the efficacy of BCO based PID controller of STATCOM in reduction of voltage flickers in addition to a significant improvement in power flow.