Transmission Congestion Management by Determining Optimal Location of FACTS Devices in Deregulated Power Systems

In a deregulated electricity market, it may always not be possible to dispatch all of the contracted power transactions due to congestion of the transmission corridors. The ongoing power system restructuring requires an opening of unused potentials of transmission system due to environmental, right-of-way and cost problems which are major hurdles for power transmission network expansion. Flexible ac transmission systems devices can be an alternative to reduce the flows in heavily loaded lines, resulting in an increased loadability, low system loss, improved stability of the network, reduced cost of production and fulfilled contractual requirement by controlling the power flows in the network. A method to determine the optimal location of thyristor controlled series compensators has been suggested in this paper based on real power performance index and reduction of total system reactive power loss.