RTDS implementation of STATCOM based stabilizer for power system stability enhancement

In this paper, analysis and implementation of STATCOM based stabilizers to enhance damping of low frequency oscillations is studied and demonstrated. The effectiveness of STATCOM gain and phase modulation channels to enhance the damping characteristics is investigated. The coordination among the internal AC and DC voltage controllers and the proposed damping controllers on each channel is designed. Differential Evolution as an intelligent optimization technique is considered to design the STATCOM supplementary damping controllers. The implementation of STATCOM based stabilizers on Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS) is carried out. The RTDS experimental setup of a power system with STATCOM is verified. The power system considered is tested through nonlinear time domain simulations to examine the validity of the proposed approach to damp low frequency oscillations. Comparisons with similar results reported in literature are demonstrated.