Comparison of Advanced STATCOM Controls for Power Oscillation Damping

The paper presents some of the activities of a research project on the benefits of FACTS on inter-area Power Oscillation Damping (POD). The project has involved a group of researchers from the Italian Interuniversity Consortium "Energy and Power Systems" (EnSiEL) and Terna S.p.A., the Italian transmission system operator. The paper analyses the installations of STATCOM devices in a test network and quantifies the obtainable improvements in terms of inter-area POD due to the occurrence of different contingencies. Two different types of STATCOM with variable sizes and two different control strategies for each of these types are compared through a proper definition of indices aiming at evaluating the quality of power supply. The paper shows the comparison among these different devices in terms of POD through appropriate indicators.