GA-based congestion management in deregulated power system using FACTS devices

Congestion in the transmission lines is one of the technical problems that appear particularly in the deregulated environment. There are two types of congestion management methodologies to relieve it. One is non-cost free and the other is cost free methods. Among them later method relives the congestion technically whereas the former is related with the economics. In this dissertation congestion is relieved using cost-free method. One of the cost free techniques is installing FACTS devices into the system. FACTS devices have a great flexibility that can control the active power, reactive power and voltage simultaneously. SVC and UPFC are two FACTS devices which can relieve the congestion in the transmission lines efficiently. As the FACTS devices are costly hence it is required to find the optimal location for FACTS devices. In congestion management, the objective function is nonlinear hence in solving this function Genetic Algorithm (GA) technique is used to obtain the global optimal solution. This method is tested on IEEE testbus system with FACTS devices and it can be extended to any practical system.