Big Bang-Big Crunch Algorithm for Voltage Stability Limit Improvement by Coordinated Control of SVC Settings

Modern power system networks are operated under highly stressed conditions and there is a risk of voltage instability problems owing to increased load demand. A power system needs to be with sufficient voltage stability margin for secured operation. In this study, SVC parameters of location and size along with generator bus voltages, transformer tap settings are considered as control parameters for voltage stability limit improvement by minimizing loss and voltage deviation. The control parameters are varied in a coordinated manner for better results. The line based LQP voltage stability indicator is used for voltage stability assessment. The nature inspired meta heuristic Big Bang-Big Crunch (BB-BC) algorithm is exploited for optimization of the control variables and the performance is compared with that of PSO algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is tested on the standard IEEE 30 bus system under normal and N-1 line outage contingency conditions. The results obtained from the simulation encourage the performances of the new algorithm.