Placement and Sizing of Static VAR Compensators in Power Networks Containing Unbalanced Loads by Particle Swarm Optimization

Nowadays, Voltage unbalance is one of the most important aspects of power quality researches. Voltage unbalance has some adverse effects such as increasing the power system losses and mal operation of protective devices. So it should be minimized and maintained at an acceptable level in whole of the network. The load balancing and power factor correction of Static Var Compensator (SVC) is well known, but applying multiple compensators is not cost-effective. Therefore, size and location of the SVC have to be determined optimally. This paper introduces an approach based on the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to find the best size and location of a three-phase SVC so that to minimize a pre-defined Fitness Function(FF). The FF includes voltage profile, power system losses and particularly asymmetry in the network voltage magnitude. The FF is minimized when it is subjected to some constraints such as the limits of reactive power generation of the generators and bus voltage magnitude.

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