Particle swarm optimization for voltage stability analysis

An efficient approach to determine the voltage collapse point greatly assists planning and operation of power system, but most of existing methods are engaged with several power flow computations and they do not provide the optimal operating condition, which is the maximum loading point of a system without exceeding the power limits of generators. This paper introduces a novel approach by particle swarm optimization, which directly determines the voltage collapse point without successive power flow computations and furnishes the optimal operating condition as well. The proposed approach has been tested with a 6-bus test system and 182-bus power system of Sri Lanka as well as it is assessed for diverse applications of voltage stability analysis by concerning about single element outage and the role of static var compensators. Further, performance of the proposed approach is evaluated with continuation power flow method and the optimality is verified by eigenvalue analysis.