A new formulation for FACTS allocation for security enhancement against voltage collapse

This paper proposes a new formulation for reactive power (VAR) planning problem including the allocation of flexible ac transmission systems (FACTS) devices. A new feature of the formulation lies in the treatment of security issues. Different from existing formulations, we directly take into account the expected cost for voltage collapse and corrective controls, where the control effects by the devices to be installed are evaluated together with the other controls such as load shedding in contingencies to compute an optimal VAR planning. The inclusion of load shedding into the formulation guarantees the feasibility of the problem. The optimal allocation by the proposed method implies that the investment is optimized, taking into account its effects on security in terms of the cost for power system operation under possible events occurring probabilistically. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programming problem of a large dimension. The Benders decomposition technique is tested where the original problem is decomposed into multiple subproblems. The numerical examinations are carried out using AEP-14 bus system to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.