Steady state voltage stability enhancement using shunt and series FACTS devices

Power systems consist of generation, transmission, and distribution of power to customers. To meet the ever increasing population demand, the power industry has also grown by increasing the number of devices and incorporating highly complex as well as expensive components into the power system. It becomes specifically important to focus on voltage stability analysis of the power system to avoid worst-case scenarios, such as voltage collapse, which may result in huge losses. One of the main causes of voltage collapse is the insufficient availability of reactive power in the system. This can be overcome by adding reactive power sources such as FACTS devices into it. An attempt on enhancing the steady-state voltage stability using FACTS devices has been made in this work. An IEEE 39-bus test system is built using MATLAB and PSAT. FACTS devices such as Static VAR Compensator (SVC), Static Synchronous Compensator (STATCOM), and Thyristor Controlled Series Capacitor (TCSC), are included into the test system as three separate test cases. Continuation power flow analysis is performed on the system with no FACTS included in it and on the three test cases with different FACTS included in it. The output is displayed in the form of P-V curves, loading margin curves, and active and reactive power losses curves. The results obtained are all compared with each other to draw conclusions on the effectiveness of the each of the FACTS devices in improving the static voltage stability of the power system.