Optimal Placement and Sizing of Harmonic and Reactive Compensators in Interconnected Systems

Integration of distribution generators such as solar photovoltaic, wind, geothermal etc. is necessary to meet the huge and dynamic power demand in interconnected systems. High penetration of these distributed generation resources causes varying reactive power demand, grid voltage instability, transmission congestion, harmonics, large power losses, reduction in source power factor and other imbalances in the net-works. These issues will be propagated throughout the system and affects quality of power supplied to all other loads in the system. Hence installation of effective compensators is necessary. This paper presents bacterial foraging based optimal allocation and selection of compensators in an interconnected system. Static synchronous compensator, thyristor switched series compensator, passive and active filters are used as compensators in the system. The algorithm is tested in MATLAB/SIMULINK with IEEE - 5 bus system and results are compared with other combinations of compensating equipments.