AN ELITIST GRAVITATIONAL SEARCH ALGORITHM BASED APPROACH FOR OPTIMAL PLACEMENT OF FAULT CURRENT LIMITERS IN POWER SYSTEMS

Power system is getting complex due to a boost in the number of new power plants and the expansion of the transmission system in order to meet the growing for electricity. This scenario results in a large number of short circuits in the system, which may exceed the rating of existing circuit breakers (CBs) and may severely destroy system equipment. Installing fault current limiters (FCLs) into the power system is one of the most cost-effective ways to degrade fault current levels. This paper presents a method to specify the optimal numbers and locations for FCLs placement in terms of installing the smallest FCL parameters to restrain short-circuit currents below the interrupting currents of circuit breakers, to minimize transmission loss. Due to a lack of genetic, PSO and other optimization algorithms, an Elitist Gravitational Search Algorithm (EGSA) for more accurate and better results is used. This algorithm is employed to search for the location and parameter of FCLs to meet the specific requirements. The proposed method is applied to the IEEE 30-bus test system. Simulation results indicated the adequacy and precision of the proposed method.