STRATEGIC ALLOCATION OF STATCOM FOR POWER LOSS MINIMIZATION AND VOLTAGE STABILITY IMPROVEMENT IN POWER GRID USING FIREFLY ALGORITHM

This paper focuses on reducing power losses in power systems and enhancing stability and loadability by using the Newton Raphson power flow approach to determine strategic locations for installing the Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) controllers. Identifying suitable locations for these costly FACTS controllers, such as the static synchronous compensator (STATCOM), is critical and requires satisfying several criteria. STATCOM can be installed on buses and transmission lines to achieve this goal. This paper utilized the Firefly Algorithm (FA) to strategically allocate a STATCOM unit to minimize power losses. The methodology is tested on the IEEE 57-bus grid, comparing scenarios with and without STATCOM installations. The results identified bus 8 as the most effective location for the STATCOM, where significant voltage instability was observed. The optimal size of 200 MVAr was selected to provide sufficient reactive power to stabilize voltage and improve power flow efficiency, addressing network congestion. The voltage stability of the network showed improvement, with the minimum voltage magnitude rising from 0.9185 in the base case to 0.95 per unit. Furthermore, the minimizations of real and reactive power losses were substantial, amounting to 34.59% and 33.23%, respectively. These findings highlight how effectively the FA optimizes STATCOM placement, leading to improved performance of the power grid.