Performance Augmentation of an Arc Suppression Device using Particle Swarm Optimization Based Proportional Resonant Controller

This work proposes the control of an are suppression device (ASD) using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) based proportional-resonant controller. Neutral point voltage control has been performed to reach zero voltage at the faulty phase, thereby achieving sufficient suppression of the fault current so that the sustainment of the arc becomes impossible. Therefore, the probability of a powerline bushfire has significantly reduced. The advantage of voltage control-based regulation of ASD over current injection-based control is that the performance of ASD is independent of the fault resistance. At first proportional-integral (PI) controller was designed for the outer voltage and inner current control loop using the PSO algorithm. Then, the design is extended to the proportional-resonant (PR) controller for the voltage control loop and the PI controller for the current control loop. The PSO-PR voltage controller enabled a better tracking of the reference voltage and ensured reduced fault current than classical PI and PSO-PI-based design. The integral time absolute error (ITAE) cost function achieved using PSO-PR was 83.12% less than the classical PI controller and 36.32% less than the PSO-PI controller. The modeling and simulation of the system have been performed in MATLAB/Simulink platform.