System Security Improvement by Using

Differential Evolution Algorithm Based FACTS

Power

Allocation

H. R. Baghaee, Student Member, IEEE, B. Vahidi, Senior Member, IEEE, S. Jazebi,

G. B. Gharehpetian, Member, IEEE, and A. Kashefi
capability. They can reduce flow of heavily loaded lines,
resulting in low system losses, improved both transient and
small signal stability of network, reduced the cost of
production and fulfilled contractual requirement by
controlling the power flow in the network. They can enable
lines to flow the power near its nominal rating and maintain
its voltage in desired level and so enhance power system
security in contingencies [1-6]. For a meshed network, an
improve security margins.
optimal allocation of FACTS devices allows to control its
This paper presents a Differential Evolution Algorithm (DEA) power flows and thus to improve the system loadability and
based allocation of FACTS devices considering cost function of the security [1].
FACTS devices and power system losses. Proposed algorithm is
tested on IEEE 30 bus power system for optimal allocation of Effect of FACTS devices on power system security, reliability
multi-type FACTS devices and the results are presented and and loadability has been studied according to proper control
objectives [4-14]. Researchers have tried to find suitable
discussed.
location for FACTS devices to improve power system security
and loadability [13-16]. The optimal allocation of these
Index Terms-- Differential Evolution Algorithm, FACTS devices in deregulated power systems has been presented in
Devices, Optimal Allocation, Power System Security.
[17-18]. Heuristic approaches and intelligent algorithms to
find suitable location of FACTS devices have been used in
Abstract-- The fast development of restructuring, the problem
of power system security has become a matter of grave concern
in deregulated power industry. To maintain security of such
systems, it is desirable to plan suitable measures to improve
power system security margins. FACTS devices can regulate the
active and reactive power as well as voltage-magnitude.
Placement of these devices in suitable location can lead to control
in line flow and maintain bus voltages in desired level and so

I.

[15-18].

INTRODUCTION

tITH the increase of electric

power

demand,

power

face to stressed conditions, the operation of

power system becomes more complex and will become less
secure. Moreover, as a result of restructuring, the problem of
power system security has become a matter of grave concern
in deregulated power industry. Better utilization of available
power system capacities by Flexible AC Transmission
Systems (FACTS) devices has also become a major concern
in power systems.
FACTS devices can control power transmission parameters
such as series impedance, voltage, phase angle by their fast
control characteristics and their continues compensating
systems

can

This work was supported in part by the Electrical Engineering Department

Amirkabir University of Technology.
H. R. Baghaee, B. Vahidi, S. Jazebi, G.B. Gharehpetian and A. Kashefi
are with the Electrical Engineering Department, Amirkabir University of
Technology, Hafez Ave, Tehran-Iran, (e-mails: hrbaghaeegaut.ac.ir,
grptiancaut.ac. ir,
vahidigaut.ac.ir,
saeed_3jgaut.ac. ir,
in

al

i_kashefi(Thaut.ac.ir).

978-1-4244-1762-9/08/$25.00 C2008 IEEE

In this paper, a novel heuristic method is presented based on

Differential Evolution Algorithm (DEA) to find optimal
location of multi-type FACTS devices to enhance power
system security and reduce power system losses considering
investment cost of these devices. DEA is previously used for
many optimization problems like optimal reactive power
planning, economic dispatch and state estimation in power
systems [19-21]. The proposed method is tested on IEEE 30
bus system and results are also presented.
II. MODEL OF FACTS DEVICES

A. FACTS Devices
In this paper, three different FACTS devices have been
selected to place in the suitable location to improve security
margins of power systems. These three are: TCSC (Thyristor
Controlled Series Capacitor), SVC (Static VAR Compensator)
and UPFC (Unified Power Flow Controller). They are shown
in Fig. 1.
Power flow through the transmission line i-j namely P.

depends on the line reactance, X, , the bus voltage

magnitudes Vi, and Vj, and phase angle between sending

and receiving buses 8i and

51, expressed by (1).

Xline

Where

is the reactance of the transmission line and

rTcsc is the compensation factor of TCSC. The rating of

TCSC depends on transmission line. To prevent
overcompensation, TCSC reactance is chosen between

- 0.7XIine to 0.2Xline [26-27].

* SVC

T-

(a)

v,v

(b)

Fig. 1. Modeled FACTS devices (a) TCSC, (b) SVC and (c) UPF

Pj= X' sin(8,i-8j)

SVC can be used for both inductive and capacitive

compensation. In this paper, SVC is modeled as an ideal
reactive power injection at bus i:
(4)
AQi = Qsvc

c.
(1)

* UPFC
Two types of UPFC models are reported in papers [28-3 1].
One is coupled model [28] and the other one is decoupled
model [29-31]. In the first type, UPFC is modeled with series
combination of a voltage source and impedance in the
transmission line. In the decoupled model, UPFC is modeled
with two separated buses. First model is more complex
compared with the second one because the modification of the
Jacobian matrix is inevitable. While decoupled model can be
easily implemented in conventional power flow algorithms. In
this paper, decoupled model has been used for modeling of
UPFC (Fig. 2).
UPFC controls power flow of the transmission line. To
present UPFC in load flow study, the variables: P.1 QuI1

TCSC can change line reactance and SVC can be used to

control the bus voltage. UPFC is the most versatile member of PJ2 and Qu2. Assuming a lossless UPFC, real power flow
FACTS devices family and control all power tr<ainsmission
from bus i to bus j can be expressed as follows:
w and nhsio
narameter-, (i.e.. line imnedance. hbus voltage
(5)
angles). Power flow can be controlled and optimized by Pi = ul
changing power system parameters using FACTS devices.
Although UPFC can control the power flow, but can not
Therefore, optimal device and allocation of FACTS devices
the real power. Therefore we have:
generate
can result in suitable utilization of power system.
B. Mathematical Model of FACTS Devices
In this paper, Steady state model of FACTS devices are
developed for power flow studies. TCSC is modeled simply to
just modify the reactance of transmission line. SVC and
UPFC are modeled using the power injection models. So,
SVC is modeled as shunt element of transmission line and
UPFC is Modeled using decoupled model. A power flow
program has been developed in MATLAB by incorporating
the mathematical models of FACTS devices.

TCSC
TCSC compensates the reactance of the transmission line.
This changes the line flow due to change in series reactance.
In this paper, TCSC is modeled by changing transmission line
reactance as follows:
=
(2)
+X TCSC

x,j Xline

XTCSC =rTCSC Xline

(3)

p 1+P 2=0

(6)

Reactive power output of UPFC, Qul and Qu2, can be set

to an arbitrary value depending on the rating of UPFC, to
maintain bus voltage.

III. SECURITY INDEX

The security index for contingency analysis of power

system can be expressed as follows [32-33]:

Z Wi Vi->Vrefi

Jp =

w(
j
s

si

j,amx

)2

(7)
(8)

Where:

V ~W. : Voltage amplitude and associated weighting factor

for ith bus, respectively,

sj

W : Apparent power and associated

weighting factor

for

jth line, respectively,

V,,f i: Nominal voltage magnitude which is assumed to be

lpu for all load buses (i.e., PQ buses) and to be equal to
specified value for generation buses (i.e., PV buses) and
Sj,max Nominal apparent power of ith line or
transformer.

JP

is the security index which means the even distribution

of the total active flow and Jv is the security index which

means how much the bus voltage is close to the reference

P1 + jI

1% + jQ

(10)
i= XrlG +FX(Xr2,G Xr3,G)
In a variable scale DEA the weighting factor F has a direct
effect on the convergence rate. Using a smaller scaling factor,
DEA becomes increasingly robust. However, much
computational time should be expanded to evaluate the
objective function. DEA with a larger scaling factor generally
should result in falling into local solution but it is faster [34].
IN this paper, a variable scale differential evolution with a
variable F has been used to overcome the drawback of the

1
5

fixed and random scaling factor problems. Here, - success

rule of evolution strategies is used to accelerate searching out
the global solution [34]. The rule of updating scaling factor is
presented in (11).

Cd.F OD
1
p-epF>TVFW

FpV

vV

I Ci FLD
F OLD

Fig. 2. Decoupled model for UPFC.

voltage. If the number of overloaded line decreases, the value

of Jp would be reduced. Similarly, when the bus voltage
have a value close to the desired level, Jv would be a small
value. Minimization of both,
maximization of security margins.

JP

and

J. means

the

if P

>

(1 1)

5
1

ifPSp= 5

Where Ps is the frequency of successful mutation

measured. The initial value of F is set to 1.2. The factors
Cd and Ci that are used for adjustment in every q iteration is
set to 0.82 and 1.2195, respectively. q is also set to 10 [34].
Three vectors X.1,G ^ X.2,G and X.3,G are selected
randomly such that the indices I,r1,r2 and r3 are distinct from
1,2,...,NP. Then crossing operation is used and the trial
vector, ui is given by the (12).

IV. PROPOSED ALGORITHM

G VjiVG+l if rand1,1 < CR or j = Irand

(12)
A. Variable Scale DEA
j,G+l X, iG+iif rand. i > CR
Irand
DEA is an evolutionary algorithm similar to the population
for i = 1,2,...,~NP and j = 1,2,..., D
based algorithms such as Genetic Algorithms [34-35]. DE
operators such as cross-over, mutation and selection are
11iis a random number in U[0,1], Irand is a
where
different from Genetic Algorithms. The main operator of DEA
that improves the solution in search space and makes it self random integer from [1,2,...,D], CR is a user defined number
adaptive is the mutation. In this algorithm all solutions have between [0,1] which called crossing factor.
During selection, the vector xi,G+1 is compared with the
the same chance of being selected as parent without
considering their fitness function values but it is greedy in
space searching because of selecting the better one of new trial vector Ui,G+l and the one with the lowest function value
solution and its parents. A population of solution vectors is is admitted to the next generation through (13).
f
successfully updated by addition, subtraction and component
{Ui(X+l if f(uGl
(Ui,G+l ) otherwise
(X,G7)
(3
(3
swapping. In each generation we have NP population vectors
{i,;+G
as follows:
Mutation, crossing and selection will be continuing until
(9) the population converges hopefully to the optimum [34].
X =- IiXl,i,G,X2i,G ...XDi,GI for = 1,2,...,NP
The configuration of FACTS devices is encoded by two
where G is the generation number and D is the problem's
parameters: the location of each device and its rating. The
dimension. In each generation, for individual i, we use the initial population is made up of NP chromosomes such as the
one shown in Fig. 3. For UPFC and TCSC, the location
mutation operator and get the i vector by (10).
=

or]j

<'

defines the number of the line in which devices which should

be installed. For the SVC location shows the bus number
where SVC is to be located. The second row shows the rating
of UPFC and SVC in pu and the compensation factor for
TCSC. UPFC rating varies in the range of [0.3, 1] pu. SVC
rating varies between [0.3, 1] pu. TCSC compensation factor
varies in the range of [-0.7, 0.2].
Parameter values of DEA are adjusted according to
Table. 1. Number of iterations and the population is set to 100
and 200 respectively.
TABLE I

TCSC

D
7

F
1.2

I.JPFC

*8----------S *w ----l*

--888*--------

40
1
:7 20
2

TCC

60
.....

L-.n 0

2011

DEA PARAMETERS FOR MULTI-TYPE CASE

NP
200

IN
'IN

CR
0.9

Iterations
100

1 CIO

S200
ah. Rne

300

41010

Fig. 4. Cost Function of the FACTS devices:

SVC, TCSC and UPFC
Upper limit: Total investment Costs
_ _ l: Lower limit: Total investment Costs
:UPFC + :TCSC
:SVC

The coefficient a1 to a4 can be selected by trial and error.

The selected values are 0.2665 0.5714 0. 1421 and

SVC

0.02 respectively.

Fig. 3. A typical chromosome.

V. SIMULATION RESULTS

B. Cost Functions ofFACTS devices

Using Database of [32], cost function for SVC, TCSC and
UPFC are shown in Fig. 4 and modeled as follows:

Simulation studies carried out done for different scenarios

in the IEEE 30 bus power system. Five different cases have
been considered:
* Case 1: power system normal operation (without
For TCSC:
FACTS devices installation),
CTCSC = 0.0015s2
0.713s + 153.75 (US$ kVAR) (9)
* Case 2: one TCSC is installed,
* Case 3: one SVC is installed,
For SVC:
* Case 4: one UPFC is installed, and
c = 0.0003s2 - 0.305 Is + 127.38 (US$ kVAR) (10)
*
Case 5: Multi-type (TCSC, SVC and UPFC) FACTS
For UPFC:
devices are installed.
CUPFC = 0.000352 -0.2691s +188.22 (US$/kVAR) (1 1)
The first case is the normal operation of network without
Where s is the operating range of the FACTS devices in using any FACTS device. In second, third and forth cases just
MVAR andCTCSC CSVC and CUPFC are in US$/ kVAR.
installation of one device has been considered. Each device is
placed an optimal location obtained by DEA. Multi-type
FACTS devices installation is considered in 5 scenario. In
C. Fitness Function
this case three different kinds of FACTS devices have been
The goal of the optimization algorithm is to place FACTS considered to place in an optimal location and to enhance
devices in order to enhance power system security level power system security.
considering cost function of FACTS devices. These devices
The performance index evolution of implemented methods
should be place to prevent congestion in transmission lines is shown in Fig. 5 and Fig. 6. The average and maximum
and transformers and maintain bus voltages close to their performance index are shown in Fig. 5 respectively. Tables II
reference value. Security index introduced in the section III, and III show optimal location of devices for different cases.
have been used in objective function considering cost function These results show the installation of one device in network
of FACTS devices and power system losses. Fitness function could not lead to improve security of power system and
reduction in power system losses simultaneously. Multi-type
FF is expressed by the following equation:
FF = al.Jr + a2.JV +a3 (Total Invesment Cost) + a4 (Losses) FACTS devices should be placed in optimal location to
improve security margins and reduce losses in the network.
(12)
-

TABLE II
FACTS ALLOCATION AND SIZES RESULTS

UPFC

Device Type
Size/Location

TCSC
SVC
UPFC
Multi-type

TCSC

Size

(MVA)

Location
(Bus No-Bus No)

(MVA)
90.6

48.3
78.9

12-15
12-15

Ji

1
2
3
4
5

3.45
3.39
3.26
3.21
3.03

"V
24.2
19.6
19.1
16.4
10.18

Cost ($)

Losses
(MVA)

28.36
22.51
26.12
23.09
20.17

9197500
4730000
8501600
28365000

Fig. 5. Performance index evolution (average of fitnesses in every iteration).

3.2

a)
a)
a)

LL

2-.9t
2.8

2.7

-L0

10

20

30

40

50
60
Iteration#

70

80

90

Fig. 6. Performance index evolution (maximum of fitnesses

74.1

SVC

Location
(Bus No-Bus No)

Size

(MVA)

Location
(Bus No.)

1-2

41

2-5

63.7

improvement of system security and reduction of power

losses.

TABLE III
SIMULATION RESULTS OF DIFFERENT CASES

Scenario

Size

100

in every

iteration).

VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper a novel approach is presented for the optimal
placement of multi-type FACTS devices based on Differential
Evolution Algorithm (DEA). The Simulation of IEEE 30
bus test system for different scenarios shows that the
placement of Multi-type FACTS devices leads to

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VIII. BIOGRAPHIES
Hamid Reza Baghaee received the BSc degree in
Electrical Engineering from Kashan University in
2006. Currently he is graduate student of Power
Engineering in Amirkabir University of Technology.
His research interests are power system dynamic and
control, HVDC &FACTS devices, power market and
application of Artificial Intelligence in power systems.
Behrooz Vahidi (M' 2000, SM' 2004) was born in
in 1953. He received the B.S. in electrical
engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran,
Iran in 1980 and M.S. degree in electrical engineering from
Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran in 1989.
He also received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from
UMIST, Manchester, UK in 1997. From 1980 to 1986 he
worked in the field of high voltage in industry as chief
engineer. From 1989 to present he has been with the
department of electrical engineering of Amirkabir
University of Technology where he is now an associate professor. His main
fields of research are high voltage, electrical insulation, power system
transient, lightning protection and pulse power technology. He has authored
and co-authored over 120 papers and five books on high voltage engineering
and power system.

Abadan, Iran

Saeed Jazebi was born in 1983. He received the B.S

degree in electrical engineering from Shahid Bahonar

University, Kerman, Iran. He is working toward his the

M.S degree in electrical engineering at Amirkabir
University, Tehran, Iran. His field of interest includes
distribution system planning, optimization techniques,
FACTS devices, high voltage and application of
statistical pattern recognition in transient analysis of
power systems.
G.B. Gharehpetian was born in Tehran, in 1962. He
received his BS and MS degrees in electrical
engineering in 1987 and 1989 from Tabriz University,
Tabriz, Iran and Amirkabir University of Technology
(AUT), Tehran, Iran, respectively, graduating with First
Class Honors. In 1989 he joioned the Electrical
Engineering Department of AUT as a lecturer. He
received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from
Tehran University, Tehran, Iran, in 1996. As a Ph.D.
student he has received scholarship from DAAD (German Academic Exchange
Service) from 1993 to 1996 and he was with High Voltage Institute of RWTH
Aachen, Aachen, Germany. He held the position of Assistant Professor in
AUT from 1997 to 2003, and has been Associate Professor since 2004. Dr.
Gharehpetian is a Senior Member of Iranian Association of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers (IAEEE), member of IEEE and member of central board
of IAEEE. Since 2004 he is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of IAEEE. The
power engineering group of AUT has been selected as a Center of Excellence
on Power Systems in Iran since 2001. He is a member of this center and since
2004 the Research Deputy of this center. Since November 2005 he is the
director of the industrial relation office of AUT. He is the author of more than
200 journal and conference papers. His teaching and research interest include
power system and transformers transients, FACTS devices and HVDC

transmission.