Modified whale optimisation-based optimal location of UPQC in distribution system for power quality improvement

A number of researchers has studied the unified power quality conditioner (UPQC) as an eventual solution to enhance the power quality in the electrical distribution system. However, due to the high cost, the location or position of UPQC in distribution system needs to be decided with immense care and must preferably be solved as the optimisation problem. This paper presents a power quality improvement model based on a new modified optimisation algorithm, namely worst solution linked whale optimisation algorithm update (WS-WU). The proposed algorithm finds the optimal location of the UPQC device concerning the power system losses, UPQC cost, and voltage stability index as well. The experimentation is carried out in both IEEE 33 and 69 bus systems. The performance of the proposed model is compared over other conventional methods in terms of performance and convergence analysis, and proves the superiority of the proposed method. Copyright © 2021 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.