IET-UK International Conference on Information and Communication Technology in Electrical Sciences (ICTES 2007),

Dr. M.G.R. University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Dec. 20-22, 2007. pp.50-56.
50
ENHANCEMENT OF AVAILABLE TRANSFER CAPABILITY
WITH FACTS DEVICE IN COMPETITIVE POWER MARKET
B.V. Manikandan
*
, S. Charles Raja

, P. Venkatesh

*
Mepco Schlenk Engineering College, Sivakasi, Tamilnadu, India,
Email: bvmani@mepcoeng.ac.in

KLN College of Information Technology, Madurai, Email: charlesrajas@yahoo.com

The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, USA,
Email: pveee@tce.edu,vup1@psu.edu
Keywords: Available Transfer Capability, Flexible AC
Transmission Systems, Particle Swarm Optimization,
Thyristor Controlled Series Compensator.
Abstract
In order to facilitate the electricity market operation and trade
in the restructured environment, ample transmission
capability should be provided to satisfy the demand of
increasing power transactions. The conflict of this
requirement and the restrictions on the transmission
expansion in the restructured electrical market has motivated
the development of methodologies to enhance the Available
Transfer Capability (ATC) of the existing transmission grids.
The insertion of FACTS devices in electrical systems seems
to be a promising strategy to enhance ATC. In this paper, the
viability and technical merits of boosting ATC using
Thyristor Controlled Series Compensator (TCSC) is being
analyzed. The work has been carried out on sample 6 bus and
IEEE 30 bus systems. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO)
algorithm is employed to obtain the optimal settings of TCSC
and the results obtained are quite encouraging.
1 Introduction
Deregulation of the electric industry throughout the world
aims at creating competitive markets to trade electricity,
which generates a host of new technical challenges to market
participants and power system researchers. For transmission
networks, one of the major consequences of the non-
discriminatory open-access requirement is a substantial
increase of power transfers, which demand adequate
available transfer capability (ATC) to ensure all economic
transactions. Sufficient ATC should be guaranteed to support
free market trading and maintain an economical and secure
operation over a wide range of system conditions. However,
tight restrictions on the construction of new facilities due to
the increasingly difficult economic, environmental, and social
problems, have led to a much more intensive shared use of
the existing transmission facilities by utilities and
independent power producers (IPPs). These concerns have
motivated the development of strategies and methodologies
to boost the ATC of the existing transmission networks. As a
result, power suppliers will benefit from more market
opportunities with less congestion and enhanced power
system security; it will be more profitable for transmission
owners with maximized use of existing transmission assets;
and customers will also get improved services and reduced
prices.
Aimed at this problem, various ATC enhancement
approaches have been proposed, where adjusting terminal
voltage of generators and taps changing of onload tap
changer (OLTC), particularly rescheduling generator outputs,
are considered as major control measures for ATC boosting
[5].
On the other hand, it is highly recognized that, with the
capability of flexible power-flow control and rapid action,
flexible ac transmission systems (FACTS) technology has a
wide spectrum of impacts on the way the transmission system
operates, in particular with respect to thermal, voltage, and
stability constraints. From the perspective of steady-state
system power-flow, circuits do not normally share power in
proportion to their ratings, and in most situations, voltage
profile cannot be smooth. Therefore, ATC values are always
limited ultimately by heavily loaded circuits and/or nodes
with relatively low voltage, with the increase of system
loading. As stated in [6], FACTS concept makes it possible
to use circuit reactance, voltage magnitude, and phase angle
as controls to redistribute line flow and regulate nodal
voltage, thereby mitigating the critical situation. In addition,
partly due to the physical constraints on circuit impedance
and phase angle of nodal voltage, most high-voltage
transmission lines are operating far below their thermal rating
[7]. By the control of line reactance and voltage phase angle,
FACTS technology enables line loading to increase flexibly,
in some cases, all the way up to thermal limits. Therefore,
Enhancement of Available Transfer Capability with Facts Device in Competitive Power Market

51
theoretically it can offer an effective and promising
alternative to conventional methods for ATC enhancement.
Undoubtedly, it is very important and imperative to carry out
studies on exploitation of FACTS technology to enhance the
ATC [15].
In this paper, ATC is calculated using ACPTDF in Combined
Economic Emission Dispatch (CEED) environment and an
attempt is made to enhance Available Transfer Capability
using TCSC i.e. Thyristor controlled series compensator.
Both bilateral and multilateral transactions are considered.
The optimal settings of TCSC are obtained from Particle
Swarm Optimization Algorithm. Constriction factor
approach PSO is also applied for checking the convergence
of the optimization problem. The results are being compared
for sample 6 bus and IEEE 30 bus systems.
2 Available Transfer Capability
Available Transfer Capability (ATC) is a measure of the
transfer capability remaining in the physical transmission
network for further commercial activity over and above the
already committed uses [1]. ATC evaluation is important
because it is the point where power system reliability meets
electricity market efficiency. The computation of ATC has
been carried out by the various researchers. The new
methods to evaluate ATC in competitive environment are
proposed in [8]. ATC can have a huge impact on market
outcomes and system reliability, so the results of ATC are of
great interest to all involved. ATC can be expressed as:
ATC TTC Existing Transmission Commitments = (1)
Where, Total Transfer Capability (TTC) is defined as the
amount of electric power that can be transferred over the
interconnected transmission network or particular path or
interface in a reliable manner while meeting all of a specific
set of defined pre and post contingency conditions.
ATC at base case, between bus m and bus n using line flow
limit (thermal limit) criterion is mathematically formulated
using PTDF as
{ }
,
min ,
mn ij mn L
ATC T ij N = (2)
Where T
ij,mn
denotes the transfer limit values for each line in
the system. It is given by
( )
max 0
,
,
, ,
max 0
,
,
; 0
(infinite ) ; 0
( )
; 0
ij ij
ij mn
ij mn
ij mn ij mn
ij ij
ij mn
ij mn
P P
PTDF
PTDF
T PTDF
P P
PTDF
PTDF

>


= =
`



<

)
(3)
Where
P
ij
max
is the MW power limit of a line between bus i and j.
P
ij
o
is the base case power flow in line between bus i and j.
PTDF
ij,mn
is the power transfer distribution factor for the line
between bus i and j when a transaction is taking place
between bus m and n.
N
L
is the total number of lines.
The optimal settings of generators under CEED environment
are considered as a base case power flow.
2.1 CEED problem formulation
Optimization of CEED problem has been mathematically
formulated and is given by the following equation
1
( , )
Ng
i
min f FC EC
=
=

(4)
Where
is the optimal cost of generation (US$/h).
FC and EC total fuel cost and total emission of generators
respectively.
N
g
represents the number of generators connected in the
network.
The cost is optimized within the following power system
constraint
1
Ng
gi d l
i
P P P
=
= +

(5)
Where
P
d
is the total load of the system and
P
l
is the transmission losses of the system.
The bi-objective combined economic emission dispatch
problem is converted into single optimization problem by
introducing price penalty factor h [10] and the CEED
optimization problem is solved using evolutionary
programming and the more information is also available in
the paper [11].
IET-UK International Conference on Information and Communication Technology in Electrical Sciences
52
2.2 ACPTDF formulation
The AC power transfer distribution factors proposed for
calculation of ATC [4] were used to find various transmission
system quantities for a change in MW transaction at different
operating conditions.
Consider a bilateral transaction t
k
between a seller bus m and
buyer bus n. Line l carries the part of the transacted power
and is connected between buses i and j. For a change in real
power, transaction among the above buyer and seller by t
k

MW, if the change in a transmission line quantity q
1
is q
1
,
power transfer distribution factors can be defined as,
,
l
ij mn
k
q
PTDF
t

(6)
The transmission quantity q
l
can be either real power flow
from bus i to j (P
ij
) (or) real power flow from bus j to bus i
(P
ji
). The above factors have been proposed to compute at a
base case load flow with results using sensitivity properties of
NRLF Jacobian. Consider full Jacobian in polar coordinates
[J
T
], defined to include all the buses except slack (including
Q-V equations also for PV buses).
| |
1
1
T
P P
P P
V
J
V Q Q Q Q
V

(
(
( ( (

= = (
( ( (

(
(

(7)
In a base case load flow, if only one of the k
th

bilateral
transactions is changed by t
k
MW, only the following two
entries in the mismatch vector on RHS of (7) will be non
zero.
i
k
P t = j
k
P t = (8)
With the above mismatch vector elements, the change in
voltage angle and magnitude at all buses can be computed
from (7) & (8) and, hence, the new voltage profile can be
calculated. These can be utilized to compute all the
transmission quantities q
l
and hence the corresponding
change in these quantities q
l
from the base case. Once the
q
l
for all the lines corresponding to a change in transaction
t
k
is known, PTDFs can be obtained from (6).
3 Particle Swarm Optimization
A. Overview
The PSO is a population-based optimization method first
proposed by Kennedy and Eberhart [9]. PSO technique finds
the optimal solution using a population of particles. Each
particle represents a candidate solution to the problem. PSO
is basically developed through simulation of bird flocking in
two-dimensional space. Some of the attractive features of the
PSO include ease of implementation and the fact that no
gradient information is required. It can be used to solve a
wide array of different optimization problems.
B. PSO algorithm definition
The PSO definition is presented as follows.
1. Each individual particle i has the following properties:
a current position in search space x
i
, a current velocity v
i

and a personal best position in search space y
i
.
2. The personal best position y
i
corresponds to the position
in search space, where particle i presents the smallest
error as determined by the objective function f,
assuming a minimization task.
3. The global best position denoted by

y represents the
position yielding the lowest error among all the y
i

s.
Equations (8) and (9) define how the personal and global best
values are updated at time t, respectively. It is assumed
below that that swarm consists of s particles.
Thus, i 1s
( )
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
, 1
1
1 , 1
i i i
i
i i i
y t if f y t f x t
y t
x t if f y t f x t

+

+ =
`
+ > +

)
(8)
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) { } ( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) { }
0 1
0 1
, ,.... |
min , ,....

s
s
y t y t y t y t f y t
f y t f y t f y t
=
(9)
During each iteration, every particle in the swarm is updated
using (10) and (11). Two pseudorandom sequences
( ) ( )
1 2
~ 0, 1 ~ 0, 1 r U and r U are used to affect the stochastic
nature of the algorithm. For all dimensions j 1 . n, let x
ij
,
y
ij
and v
ij
be the current position, current personal best
position, and velocity of the jth dimension of the ith particle.
The velocity update step is
( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
, , 1 1,
, , 2 2, ,
1

i j i j j
i j i j j j i j
v t wv t c r t
y t x t c r t y t x t
+ = +
( ( +

(10)
The new velocity is then added to the current position of the
particle to obtain its next position.
Enhancement of Available Transfer Capability with Facts Device in Competitive Power Market

53
( ) ( ) ( ) 1 1
i i i
x t x t v t + = + + (11)
The value of each dimension of every velocity vector v
i
is
clamped to the range | |
max max
, v v to reduce the likelihood of
the particle leaving the search space. The value of v
max
is
usually chosen to be
max max
, 0.1 1.0 v k x where k =
Where x
max
denotes the domain of the search space. Note
that this does not restrict the values of x
i
to the
range| |
max max
, v v . Rather than that, it merely limits the
maximum distance that a particle will move.
The acceleration coefficients c
1
and c
2
control how far a
particle will move in a single iteration. Typically, these are
both set to a value of 2.5. The inertia weight w in (10) is used
to control the convergence behaviour of the PSO. Small
values of w result in more rapid convergence usually on a
suboptimal position, while a too large value may prevent
divergence. Typical implementations of the PSO adapt the
value of w during the training stage, e.g., linearly decreasing
it from 1.0 to near 0 over the execution. Convergence can be
obtained with fixed values as shown in [9]. In general, the
inertia weight w is set according to the following equation:
max min
max
max
w w
w w iter
iter

=
Where iter
max
is the maximum number of iterations, and iter
is the current iteration number.
The sequential steps for simple PSO are illustrated in the
flowchart shown in Fig.1
The PSO system combines two models; a social-only model
and the cognition-only model [9]. These models are
represented by the velocity update, shown in (10). The
second term in the velocity update equation
( ) ( ) ( )
1 1, , , j i j i j
c r t y t x t (

is associated with cognition since
it only takes into account the particles own experiences. The
third term in the velocity update equation
( ) ( ) ( )
2 2, ,

j j i j
c r t y t x t (

represents the social interaction
between the particles. It suggests that individuals ignore their
own experience and adjust their behaviour according to the
successful beliefs of individual in the neighbourhood.
Reference [2] presents useful information about PSO.
C. Constriction factor approach
There are so many variants of PSO and one such variant is
constriction factor approach (CFA). Both in simple PSO and
Constriction Factor Approach (CFA), maximum and
minimum velocities are set to a priori values to avoid the
infeasible combinations. In PSO, these values are kept
constant. However, in CFA, the velocity (v
i+1
) is modified by
a factor known as constriction factor () such that
(v
i+1
) = (v
i
). This modification increases the performance of
simple PSO. The constriction factor () is selected between
(0, 1). By properly selecting the value of constriction factor
(), the velocities can be maintained in a constant interval
without exceeding the set velocities. It helps for ensuring the
convergence of the optimization problem.

Figure 1: Flow chart for Simple PSO
The constriction factor value can be either fixed or varied
randomly. In fixed CFA, a fixed value (say 0.78) is chosen.
To improve the effectiveness of the approach, the value of
may be selected inversely proportional to w. The modified
velocity equation is given below:
( )
( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
, , 1 1,
,
, , 2 2, ,
1
1

i j i j j
i j
i j i j j j i j
V t wv t c r t
v t
y t x t c r t y t x t

( + = +
( + =
( ( + (



(12)
START
Generation of initial
condition of each agent
Evaluation of searching
point of each agent
Modification of each
searching point
Maximum
Iteration
STOP
Yes
No
IET-UK International Conference on Information and Communication Technology in Electrical Sciences
54
( )
( )
2
1 2
2
2 4
Where
and c c

=

= +

4 Facts Devices
FACTS devices new control facilities, both in steady state
power flow control and dynamic stability control. The
possibility of controlling power flow in an electric power
system without generation rescheduling or topological
changes can improve the performance considerably. Using
controllable components such as controllable series
capacitors, phase shifters and unified power flow controllers,
line flows can be changed in such a way that thermal limits
are not violated, losses minimized, stability margin increased,
contractual requirement fulfilled etc, without violating
specified power dispatch. The increased interest in these
devices is essentially due to two reasons. Firstly, the recent
development in high power electronics has made these
devices cost effective and secondly, increased loading of
power systems, combined with deregulation of power
industry, motivates the use of power flow control as a very
cost-effective means of dispatching specified power
transactions. Several emerging issues in competitive power
market, namely, as congestion management, enhancement of
security and available transfer capability of the system,
transmission pricing, etc. have been restricting the free and
fair trade of electricity in the open power market. FACTS
devices can play a major role in these issues. Moreover, it is
important to ascertain the location for placement of these
devices because of their considerable costs:
The insertion of such devices in electrical systems seems to
be a promising strategy to increase available transfer
capability (ATC) [12, 16]. Using controllable components
such as static VAR compensator (SVC), static compensator
(STATCOM), thyristor controlled series compensator
(TCSC), sub-synchronous series compensator (SSC),
Thyristor controlled phase angle regulator (TCPAR) and
unified power flow controllers (UPFC), line flows can be
changed in such a way that thermal limits are not violated,
losses minimized, stability margin increased, contractual
equipment fulfilled etc., without violating specified power
dispatch. In this paper, TCSC is used to enhance ATC level.
A. Thyristor controlled series compensator (TCSC)
A TCSC is a series-controlled capacitive reactance that can
provide continuous control of power on the AC line over a
wide range. From the system viewpoint, the principle of
variable-series compensation is simply to increase the
fundamental-frequency voltage across a fixed capacitor (FC)
in a series-compensated line through appropriate variation of
the firing angle, [4]. This enhanced voltage changes the
effective value of the series-capacitive reactance
The basic conceptual TCSC module comprises a series
capacitor, C, in parallel with a thyristor-controlled reactor, L
s

as shown in Fig.2. However, a practical TCSC module also
includes protective equipment normally installed with series
capacitors.

Figure 2: TCSC basic module
TCSC can be used for damping power oscillations, limiting
fault current and also for improving Transient state &
Dynamic stability. The model of a transmission line with a
TCSC connected between busi and bus-j is shown in Fig.3.

Figure 3: Model of TCSC
5 Problem Formulation
The aim of the optimization is to perform the best utilization
of the existing transmission lines. The objective is to
maximize the ATC i.e., uncommitted active transfer capacity
of the prescribed interface, when a transaction is taking place
between a seller and buyer bus. It is represented as
max flow
all lines
Max ATC P P =

Where
max
P is thermal limit of a line and
flow
P represents
base case power flow of the line.
Enhancement of Available Transfer Capability with Facts Device in Competitive Power Market

55
6 Algorithm
The basic steps are:
Step 1 : Read the system input data.
Step 2 : Run a base case load flow in CEED environment
and determine the optimal settings of the
generators [11].
Step 3 : Consider wheeling transactions (t
k
).
Step 4 : Compute AC power transfer distribution factors as
per (7).
Step 5 : Take transactions as variables, line flow, real and
reactive power limits of generators as constraints
and compute the feasible wheeling transactions
determine the ATC as per (2).
Step 6 : Find the limiting element in the system buses i.e.,
that carry power close to thermal limit
Step 7 : Place TCSC in the limiting element.
Step 8 : Run PSO algorithm and obtain the settings of
TCSC
Step 9 : Calculate ATC after incorporating TCSC
Step 10 : Is any other transaction has to be carried out, then
consider the next transaction and go to step 3,
otherwise stop the procedure.
7 Results and Discussion
The simulation studies are carried out on Intel Pentium IV,
2.66 GHZ system in MATLAB environment. The work has
been carried out on sample 6 bus and IEEE 30 bus systems.
For the ATC determination, generators setting are obtained
from CEED environment as explained by the authors in [11].
Thermal limit of each line is considered as a constraint and
reactive power demand at load buses has been taken as
constant. For running the PSO algorithm, the initial
population of individuals are created by satisfying the
constraints. For each individual in the population, the fitness
function, velocity updation and new population creation are
done as explained in section 3.2.
The network and line datas for sample 6 bus is taken from
[14] and IEEE 30 bus system is taken from [13]. ATC is
evaluated for simultaneous bilateral and multilateral
transactions using both DCPTDF and ACPTDF methods. The
position of TCSC, its settings from PSO algorithm and the
ATC values before and after incorporating TCSC are shown
in Table.1.
The CFAPSO approach is also applied for ensuring the
convergence of the optimization problem. For example, in
sample 6 bus system, for the transaction taking place between
buses 2-5, ATC value with PSO is 60.870 MW and it is
60.877 MW with CFAPSO. There is not much difference in
magnitude but the convergence iteration counts are very less
in CFA approach. It is evident from the curves shown in
Fig.4 and Fig.5.

Figure 4: Sample 6 Bus system Simple PSO
8 Conclusion
From the view point of operational planning, this paper
evaluated the impact of FACTS devices on ATC
enhancement. The results demonstrated that the use of
Table 1: ATC in MW With and Without TCSC
System Method
Transaction
Type

Transaction
ATC
Without
TCSC (MW)
ATC With
TCSC
(MW)
Settings of
TCSC
(p.u.)
Position
of TCSC
Execution
time (sec)
Bilateral 2-5 42.665 72.164 0.122 2-5 2.203
DCPTDF
Bilateral 3-6 40.366 56.484 0.050 3-6 2.718
Bilateral 2-28 42.203 60.870 0.075 2-5 37.200
Sample
6 Bus
ACPTDF
Bilateral 3-6 41.056 58.660 0.050 3-6 37.480
Bilateral 2-28 24.824 27.614 0.030 6-28 384.531
Bilateral 5-23 19.354 26.390 -0.101 15-23 416.640
IEEE 30
Bus
ACPTDF
Multilateral (2,11) -(28,26) 17.325 17.489 0.013 6-28 416.620
IET-UK International Conference on Information and Communication Technology in Electrical Sciences
56
FACTS devices, particularly the TCSC can boost the ATC
substantially. The considerable difference between ATC
values with and without TCSC justifies that the FACTS
technology can offer an effective and promising solution to
boost the usable power transfer capability, thereby improving
transmission services of the competitive electricity market.

Figure 5: Sample 6 Bus system CFAPSO
Acknowledgements
The authors express their sincere thanks to their respective
college management and Principal for being the constant
source of encouragement and for providing necessary
facilities to carry out the work.
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