Optimal placement of facts devices

This paper presents a Hybrid Genetic Algorithm (HGA) approach to solve Reactive Power Dispatch (RPD) in power systems incorporating Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) devices. The goal of the optimization is to find the best location of a given number of FACTS devices for loss minimization. In the proposed approach, some modifications are applied to the original GA in order to take into account the discrete nature of transformer tap settings and capacitor banks. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated using the IEEE 30- and IEEE 118-bus test systems. The simulation results show that the proposed method is more efficient than the conventional methods based on the traditional binary-coded GA for the reactive power dispatch problem.