Transient Stability Enhancement in IEEE 14-Bus Power System Using PSO-Optimized Unified Power Flow Controller

Transient stability has become a critical concern in modern power systems due to increased loading, frequent disturbances, as well as reduced system inertia associated with renewable energy integration. The present work investigates the enhancement of transient stability in IEEE 14 bus system using a Unified Power Flow Controller coordinated with Particle Swarm Optimization for adaptive parameter tuning. The objective is to minimize the rotor angle deviations, reduce the settling time, as well as improve the overall damping performance under the severe fault conditions. A three-phase fault is applied at a critical bus, and system response is evaluated under the three scenarios, namely without UPFC, with the fixed parameter UPFC, as well as with the PSO optimized UPFC. The simulation results indicate that the proposed method reduces the maximum rotor angle deviation from 118° to 46°, while the settling time decreases from 6.2 s to 1.8 s. Additionally, the critical clearing time improves from 0.21 s to 0.34 s, which demonstrates the enhanced stability margin. The speed deviation is also reduced from 0.045 p.u. to 0.015 p.u., which confirms the improved damping characteristics. The novelty of the study lies in the systematic integration of PSO based adaptive control with the UPFC in the standard benchmark system, which provides the robust as well as efficient framework for the stability enhancement in the modern power networks.