Design of the PI–UPFC–POD and PSS Damping Controllers Using an Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

This paper presents two variations of the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm, the classical and a modified version, called GBest, for the design of the proportional–integral and supplementary damping controllers: power system stabilizers and the unified power flow controller (UPFC)–power oscillation damping set. The objective is to insert additional damping to the low-frequency oscillation modes present in multimachine electrical power systems, to guarantee the small-signal stability of the system considering different loading conditions. A new current injection formulation for the UPFC is proposed and incorporated into the current sensitivity model used to represent the dynamical operation of the electric power system. Static and dynamical analysis were performed for the New England system to validate the proposed formulation and to evaluate the performance of the optimization algorithms. The results indicate that the modified version of the ABC algorithm has superior performance for this problem, providing robust solutions, that ensure the stability of the system even when small variations of the load are considered.