Comparison of Metaheuristic Optimization Techniques for the Optimal Placement and Sizing of Shunt Flexible Alternating Current Transmission Systems Device Considering Load Increase

In this paper, the challenges of determining the optimal location and size of the flexible alternating current transmission systems (FACTS) devices on the transmission system are solved. The FACTS devices are placed and sized optimally using three optimizations: genetic algorithm, simulated annealing, and flower pollination algorithm (FPA). Three FACTS devices, capacitor, Static VAR Compensator (SVC), and static synchronous compensator (STATCOM), are determined for two parameters: location and size to solve the multi-objective problem. The simulation results are analyzed to find the best optimization and FACTS device to improve the voltage profile and simultaneously lower the active power loss of the system. To investigate its effectiveness, the proposed approach was tested using two test systems, Pakistan's transmission network and IEEE 30 bus. Conducted in three cases for the real system data, the first case being the base case with a 50% uniformly increase in both active and reactive power of the load bus voltage, the second case with a 50% increase in only the active power, and the third case with a 50% increase in reactive power. The comparison of this optimization has shown that FPA performed better than the other algorithm and with the fastest convergence rate. The simulation results demonstrate that STATCOM was effective to minimize the losses while enhancing the voltage profile. Also, the Wilcoxon test is applied to confirm the efficiency of the STATCOM device.