Application of electricity tracing theory and hybrid ant colony algorithm for ranking bus priority in power system

Locating the most suitable locations in power system for any corrective and preventive actions is not an easy task especially for large scale network. The recent methods for determining the suitable generators for power scheduling and locations for shunt elements placement such as capacitor bank and Flexible Alternating Current Transmission System (FACTS) devices are sensitivity analysis, optimization approach, and stability index calculation. Meanwhile, there are also various power tracing techniques have been developed, but only applicable for transmission service pricing in deregulated environment. For a new approach, this paper proposes a technique to determine the suitability of locations in power system for any preventive and corrective actions via Fast Voltage Stability Index Tracing (FVSI-T) with the assistance of a new hybrid algorithm, Blended Crossover Continuous Ant Colony Optimization (BX-CACO). After experimentation and comparative studies, the proposed technique reflects a potential performance for real system applications. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.