Optimal Positioning and Sizing of Power Flow Controllers Using a Scenario Based SCOPF Approach

Optimal positioning and sizing of Power Flow Controllers (PFCs) is a crucial task in order to establish effective congestion management. A scenario based Security Constrained Optimal Power Flow (SCOPF) approach is presented in this paper that can be applied to a variety of PFCs and is able to simultaneously incorporate a number of network use cases and (n-1)-cases and thus determine optimal positions and sizes. The proposed method allows to not only take power flow constraints into account but also other technical limitations such as spatial or structural requirements that are necessary for a PFC installation. Simulations have been carried out in the IEEE 39 Bus New England Test System to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method showing the impact on the overloads in the system for different numbers of allowed PFC installations as well as the robustness of the expansion path.