2009 Third International Conference on Power Systems, Kharagpur, INDIA December 27-29

> Paper identification number 216<

Active Power Loss Minimization With FACTS

Devices Using SA/PSO Techniques.
Subrata Majumdar

A K Chakraborty

Electrical Engineering Deptt.

College of Engineering
& Management, Kolaghat
KTPP Township, Purba Medinipur,
West Bengal, India.
Sagarnil2@rediffmail.com

Electrical Engineering Deptt.

College of Engineering &
Management, Kolaghat
KTPP Township, Purba Medinipur,
West Bengal, India.
akcalll@yahoo.co.in

Abstract In this paper modified simulated annealing (MSA) and

particle swarm optimization (PSO) techniques are proposed to
minimize total losses in a network system with flexible AC
transmission systems (FACTS) devices. The problem is
decomposed in two sub-problems. The first sub-problem is
optimal placement of FACTS devices using line loss sensitivity
index and the second sub-problem is the load flow with FACTS
parameters using modified SA/PSO techniques. The main
objective of this paper is to find out the more efficient approach
for loss reduction in system network. Simulations are performed
on modified IEEE 14-bus system. Results are presented which
demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques.
Keywords- FACTS, MSA,PSO,SVC, Load Flow, Loss Reduction.

I.

P.K.Chattopadhyay
Electrical Engineering Deptt.

INTRODUCTION

With the advancement in Power electronics, FACTS

devices are being utilized to achieve many objectives in an
electric power system [1,2,3]. Facts technology opens up new
opportunities for controlling line power flows, minimizing
losses and maintaining bus voltages at desired level in a power
system network. These are done by controlling one or more of
the interrelated system parameters including series impedance,
shunt impedance, current, voltage, phase angle etc. with the
insertion of facts controllers in a power system network. In this
paper static var compensator (SVC), a shunt type controller is
used to reduce total system losses. As the power flow equations
are nonlinear, hence nonlinear techniques must be employed.
Some classical methods like Newton based techniques give
satisfactory performance but have some drawbacks. Many
researchers [5] have solved similar problem by setting the no.
of iteration as convergence criterion. In this work, the
convergence criterion is not set based on no. of iterations but
the load flow criteria. In this paper modified SA and PSO based
approaches are proposed to solve the loss reduction problem.
This is done in two steps: First, the suitable buses are identified
by using line loss sensitivity index. Second, modified SA/PSO
technique is employed to determine the amount of shunt
compensation required for loss minimization. .

Jadavpur University, Kolkata-32

pkchattopadhyay@ee.jdvu.ac.in

II. Problem Formulation

In order to solve the minimization problem using SA, it is
firstly necessary to define an energy function E so that the
algorithm will be able to find the solution [4].The problem can
be formulated as follows:
Minimize f(x)
Subject to g(x) = 0, and
h(x) < 0
xl < x < x u
where f(x): a scalar function the sum of the branch losses; g(x)
functional equality constraints; the power flow equations;
h(x) ): functional inequality constraints and the limits on the
control variables; and x :the state variable vector that consists
of both the control and dependent variables(voltage magnitudes
and angles, shunt susceptances, etc);whereas the lower and
upper limits are xl and xu [5 ].
The solution process of the Loss Minimization consists of
optimizing the objective function and satisfying the following
constraints: 1) Power flow equations 2) bus voltage limits 3)
control variable limits.
The stopping criteria are load flow convergence i.e.
PandQ .
A. Identification of Suitable Buses [6]
In this paper static var compensator (SVC), a shunt type
controller is used to reduce total system losses. In order to place
the SVC, the loss sensitivity index with respect to SVC is
calculated. For computing the loss sensitivity index with
respect to SVC an exact loss formula has been used, which
express PL as,
N

PL = jk ( Pj Pk + Q j Qk ) + jk (Q j Pk Pj Qk )
j =1 i =1

Where

and

. (1)
are the loss coefficients defined as,

"978-1-4244-4331-4/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE"

2009 Third International Conference on Power Systems, Kharagpur, INDIA December 27-29
> Paper identification number 216<

jk =

r jk
V jVk

jk =

cos( j k ) .. (2)

r jk
V j Vk

B. Particle Swarm Optimization [5].

sin( j k ) (3)

Pi+jQi is the complex injected power at bus i and rjk is the real
th

part of the jk
element of [Zbus].
At bus i , the sensitivity index with respect to the SVC
parameter using the above loss formula can be expressed as,
N
PL
= 2 ( ij Q j + ij Pj ) , i = 1......... N
Qi
j =1

(4)

The SVC should be placed at a bus i having most negative

sensitivity index..
III. Simulated Annealing And Particle Swarm
Optimization:
A. Simulated Annealing [4]
Simulated annealing is a method based on local search in which
each movement is accepted if improves the system energy.
Other possible solutions are also accepted according to a
probabilistic criterion. Such probabilities are based on the
annealing process and they are obtained as a function of the
system temperature. The SA strategy starts with a high
temperature giving a high probability to accept non-improving
movements. The temperature and probability levels diminish
as long as the algorithm advances to the optimal solution. In
this way, a diversification procedure in the search algorithm is
performed with care in the system energy. Therefore, SA has
the ability to escape from local minima by accepting nonimproving energy solutions during the first and medium stages
of the algorithm. SA gives acceptable solutions when the initial
temperature is high associated with a slow cooling procedure.
The three most important parameters of the SA technique
required to solve any optimization problem are as follows:
1) The annealing temperature (T): This parameter permits
the SA technique not to be entrapped in local minima
through the use of the Boltzmanns function.
2) The number of iterations at constant temperature
(Mo): A low number of Mo will result in being
trapped in local minimum.
3) Cooling strategy ( 0 ): If the annealing temperature is
decreased too fast the algorithm will be trapped in
local minimum regardless of the proper T and Mo
tuning.
Besides these three parameters, selection of initial solution
plays an important role in the convergence process. In general,
SA technique is based on initial solution taken from the
randomly chosen variables. In this modified SA approach, the
novelty is to take initial solution through N-R method which
helps to achieve fast convergence and satisfactory results.

The PSO is a population-based optimization method first

proposed by Kennedy and Eberhart [7]. PSO technique finds
the optimal solution using a population of particles. Each
particle represents a candidate solution to the problem. PSO is
basically developed through simulation of bird flocking in twodimensional space
The PSO definition is presented as follows:
1)Each individual particle i has the following properties: a
current position in search space xi , a current velocity vi , and a
personal best position in search space yi.
2) The personal best position yi corresponds to the position in
search space, where particle i presents the smallest error as
determined by the objective function f, assuming a
minimization task..

3) The global best position denoted by y represents the

position yielding the lowest error among all the yi s.. It is
assumed below that the swarm consists of particles.
Thus, i 1.........s

yi (t + 1) = yi (t ),

if f ( yi ( t ) f ( xi (t + 1)))

= xi (t + 1) if f ( yi ( t ) > f ( xi (t + 1))) ...........(5)

y (t ) { y

(t ), y1 (t ) ..... y n (t )}

f ( y (t ))

= min { f ( y 0 (t )), f ( y1 (t ))........, f ( y n (t ))}.........(6)

Equations (5) and (6) define how the personal and global best
values are updated at time, respectively.
During each iteration, every particle in the swarm is updated
using (5) and (6). Two pseudorandom sequences r1~U(0,1) and
r2~U(0,1) are used to effect the stochastic nature of the
algorithm. For all dimensions j 1n,let xi,j ,yi,j and vi,j be the
current position, current personal best position, and velocity of
the j th dimension of the i th particle. The velocity up date step
is

vi , j (t + 1) = wvi , j (t ) + c1r1, j (t )[ yi , j (t ) xi , j (t )] + c2 r2, j (t )

[ y (t xi , j (t )]....................(7)
j

The new velocity is then added to the current position of the

particle to obtain its next position

x i (t + 1) = x i ( t ) + v i (t + 1)

(8 )

The value of each dimension of every velocity vector vi is

clamped to the range[-vmax , vmax ] to reduce the likely hood of
the particle leaving the search space. The value of vmax is
usually chosen to be

vmax = k xmax ,

where 0.1 k 1.0

denotes the domain of the search space. Note

where
that this does not restrict the values of xi to the range
2

"978-1-4244-4331-4/09/$25.00 2009 IEEE"

2009 Third International Conference on Power Systems, Kharagpur, INDIA December 27-29
> Paper identification number 216<
[-vmax , vmax ] .Rather than that, it merely limits the maximum
distance that a particle will move.
The acceleration coefficients c1 and c2 control how far a particle
will move in a single iteration. Typically, these are both set to a
value of 2.0, although it has been shown that setting c1 c2 can
lead to a good performance . The inertia weight w in (3) is used
to control the convergence behavior of the PSO. Small values
of w result in more rapid convergence usually on a sub optimal
position , while a too large value may prevent divergence
.Typical implementations of the PSO adapt the value of w
during the training stage, e.g., linearly decreasing it from 1.0 to
near0 over the execution. Convergence can be obtained with
fixed values, as shown in [10]. In general, the inertia weight is
set according to the following equation:

wmax wmin
. iter
itermax

w = wmax

Where itermax is the maximum number of iterations, and iter is

the current iteration number.
IV.Example
The proposed method has been tested for modified IEEE
14-bus system . The line parameters and bus parameters are
given in tables 1 and 2.
Table.1:Line parameters of the modified IEEE-14 bus system
j

XL

ysh

ts

Bus

Voltage

Gener

Real

Reactive

Nos

(V)

ated

Power

Power

Power

Demand

Demand

(Pg)

(Pd)

(Qd)

bSVC

1.05

0.0

0.000

0.000

0.000

1.02

0.4

0.220

0.130

0.000

3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

1.01
1.00
1.00
1.01
1.00
1.03
1.00
1.00
1.00
1.00
1.00
1.00

0.7
0.0
0.0
0.3
0.0
0.6
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0

0.950
0.450
0.080
0.120
0.000
0.000
0.300
0.090
0.035
0.060
0.135
0.150

0.200
-0.040
0.020
0.075
0.00
0.00
0.180
0.060
0.018
0.018
0.060
0.050

0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.190
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000
0.000

Where,

bSVC- =

Shunt Susceptance

V. Method of Solution and Simulation Results

2
3
4
5
5
4
5
6
7
8
9
9
10
11
12
13
14
11
13
14

0.01938
0.04699
0.05811
0.05403
0.05695
0.06701
0.01335
0.00000
0.00000
0.0000
0.0000
.00000
0.03181
0.09498
0.12291
0.06615
0.12711
0.08205
0.22092
0.17093

0.05917
0.19797
0.17632
0.22304
0.17388
0.17103
0.04211
0.25202
0.20912
0.17615
0.55618
0.11001
0.0845
0.1989
0.25581
0.13027
0.27038
0.19207
0.19988
0.34802

0.0264
0.0219
0.0187
0.0246
0.0170
0.0173
0.0064
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000
0.0000

1.000
1.000
1.000
1.000
1.000
1.000
1.000
0.932
0.978
1.000
0.969
1.000
1.000
1.000
1.000
1.000
1.000
1.000
1.000
1.000

Simulation is done in two steps: First, the suitable buses are

identified by using line loss sensitivity index. Second, SA/PSO
technique is employed to determine the amount of shunt
compensation.
0.02
0.015
Loss Sensitivity

i
Li
ne
No
s
1
1
2
2
3
2
4
1
5
2
6
3
7
4
8
5
9
4
10
7
11
4
12
7
13
9
14
6
15
6
16
6
17
9
18 10
19 12
20 13
Where,

iSending Bus
jReceiving Bus
RLine Resistance
XLLine Reactance
yshHalf line Charging Admittance
tsTransformer Tap Setting
Table 2: Bus parameters of modified IEEE-14 bus system

0.01
0.005
0
-0.005

9 10 11 12 13 14

-0.01
-0.015
Bus Numbers

Fig.1. Loss Sensitivity Vs Bus Numbers

3

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2009 Third International Conference on Power Systems, Kharagpur, INDIA December 27-29
> Paper identification number 216<

Table 3: Bus voltages and angles after Simulation

Bus

Bus

Bus

Voltage

Voltage

Nos

voltages

voltages

angles in rad

angles in rad

in

in

(MSA)

(PSO)

(MSA)

(PSO)

.
1.2
1
Loss in p.u.

In fig.1 it is observed that the loss sesitvity with respect to SVC

are more negative in bus nos. 13 & 14. Hence, bus nos.13 & 14
are considered as suitable buses for connecting SVCs to reduce
total losses.
Once the buses are identified the load flow is executed using
MSA and PSO techniques and results are tabulated in tables
3&4.

0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
1

11 21 31 41 51 61 71 81 91 101 111
Iterations

1.0500

1.0500

1.0200

1.0200

-0.0173

-0.0019

3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14

1.0100
1.0161
1.0186
1.0100
1.0186
1.0300
1.0175
1.0172
1.0183
1.0191
1.0176
1.0179

1.0100
1.0258
1.0291
1.0100
0.9924
1.0300
1.0222
1.0285
1.0211
1.0147
1.0129
1.0179

-0.0332
-0.0117
-0.0097
-0.0133
-0.0181
-0.0125
-0.0222
-0.0313
-0.0314
-0.0181
-0.0232
-0.0084

0.0044
-0.0016
-0.0064
0.0073
0.0073
0.0157
-0.0017
-0.0017
0.0200
0.0102
0.0099
-0.0074

Bus voltages and voltage angles are tabulated in table 3 after

simulation. They are lying within limits.

Fig.2. Loss Vs Iterations in SA Technique

Fig. 3. Shows variation of losses with respect to iterations in

PSO technique. PSO finds best solutions in less iterations
0.35
0.3
Loss in p.u.

0.25
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
1

11 21 31 41 51 61 71 81 91 101 111
Iterations

Table 4: Comparison results in SA, PSO and MSA technique

Initial
Loss(p.u)
Final Loss
(p.u)
Total loss
reduction(p.u)
Iterations
Simulation
time in sec.

SA
Technique
1.0623

PSO
Technique
0.3199

MSA
Technique
0.3199

0.0123

0.0074

0.0113

1.0500

0.3125

0.3086

111
330.1720

111
22.5780

111
290.8440

Fig.2 Shows variation of loss with respect to iterations in SA

technique. Initial loss found is larger than that of PSO
technique because PSO technique has population of particles,
while the SA only start with one initial solution.

Fig.3. Loss Vs Iterations in PSO Technique

Fig.4 shows the variation of loss with no. of iterations in MSA
technique. In this technique, initial solution is obtained using
the same method followed in case of PSO method. This helps to
reduce the simulation time and improves the base value of total
loss.
VI.
Conclusions
In this work , authors have implemented a novel
technique MSA effectively and successfully to
minimize the active power loss and also reduces the
simulation time. In this paper, SA and PSO
approach are also utilized to optimize the active
power loss. It claims that MSA is a better technique
than SA , however, PSO is the best approach for
active loss reduction problem.
4

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2009 Third International Conference on Power Systems, Kharagpur, INDIA December 27-29
> Paper identification number 216<
0.35

[5] A.A.A. Esmin, and G. Lambert-Torres, Loss Power

Minimization Using Particle Swarm Optimization. 2006
International Joint Conference on Neural Networks Sheraton
Vancouver Wall Centre Hotel ,Vancouver,BC,Canada,July 1621,2006.

Loss in p.u.

0.3
0.25
0.2
0.15

[6] S.Y.Ge and T.S. Chung, Optimal Active Power Flow

incorporating Power Flow Control Needs in Flexible A.C.
Transmission Systems IEEE Trans. on Power Systems, Vol.
14, No. 2, May, 1999.

0.1
0.05
0
1

11 21 31 41 51 61 71 81 91 101 111
Iterations

Fig.4. Loss Vs Iterations in MSA Technique

VIII. References:
[1]. N. G. Hingorani and L. Gyugyi, Understanding FACTS
Concepts and Technology of Flexible A.C. Transmission
System Piscataway: IEEE Press, 1999.
[2] Y. Xiao, Y. H. Song and Y. Z. Sun, Power Flow Control
Approach to Power Systems with Embedded FACTS Devices
IEEE Trans.on Power systems Vol. 17, No. 4, Nov. 2002.
[3] F.D.Galiana et.al, Assessment and Control of the Impact of
the FACTS Deviceson Power System Performance IEEE
Trans. On Power Systems, Vol. 11, No. 4, Nov. 1996.
[4] C.A. Rao-Sepulveda and B.J. Pavez-Lazo, A solution to
the optimal power flow using simulated annealing. Electric
Power and Energy System 25(2003) 47-57.

[7] J.Kennedy, The Particle Swarm Social Adaptation of

Knowledge Proc. 1997, IEEE International Evolutionary
Computation ICEC 97, Indianapolis, USA, pp. 303 308,
1997.
[7] S. H. Song, J.U. Lim and Seung-II Moon, Installation and
Operation of FACTS Devices for Enhancing Steady -State
Security Electric Power Systems Research, Vol. 70, pp. 7
15, 2004.
[8] P. Yan and A. Sekar , Steady State Analysis of Power
System having Multiple FACTS Devices using Line- FlowBased Equations. IEE Proc. Genr, Transm, Distb, Vol. 152,
No. 1, Jan. 2005.
[9]. S. Gerbex, R. Cherkaoui, and A. J. Germond, Optimal
Location of Multi-Type FACTS Devices in A Power System by
Means of Genetic Algorithm IEEE Trans. On Power Systems,
Vol.16. No. 3 August 2001.
[10] Preecha Preedavichit and S.C. Srivastava Optimal
Reactive Power Dispatch Considering FACTS Devices.
Electric Power System Research,46(1998) 251-257.

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