Optimal Deployment Of Unified Power Flow Controller On Nigerian 330 KV Grid Using Artificial Bee Colony

Transmission line power loss minimization and voltage profile improvement are challenging problems in modern power systems due to continuous increase in load demand. In this paper, an optimal location and sizing of unified power flow controller (UPFC) to improve the performance of the updated 54-bus 330 kV Nigerian network was presented. Here, the maximum power loss bus was identified to be the most favorable location for fixing the UPFC under different loading conditions; slightly underloaded (90%), normal loading (100%) and slightly over loaded (110%). The optimum location was determined using the artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm. The work was implemented in MATLAB® 2021b environment and its performance was evaluated based on the simulation results obtained. The simulation results revealed that, ABC proved to be robust based on the facts that all the voltage profile that violate ± 5% tolerance margin of the nominal voltage criteria were kept within the acceptable limit after the UPFC optimal deployment. Moreover, the proposed approach also recorded significant reduction in the overall active and reactive power loss in the entire network with a minimum percentage average active power loss reduction of 45.3% under different loading conditions.