Determination of the best location and performance analysis of STATCOM for damping oscillation

Power system oscillation is one of the major problems in power system operation. If not damped, these oscillations can grow and decrease transmission capacity of the lines which may cause interruption in energy supply. Several methods for damping of these oscillations are reported in literature. Traditionally, these oscillations have been damped by power system stabilizers. Recently, FACTS devices such as static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) equipped with a power oscillation damper (POD) have been also efficiently used for damping oscillation. It should be noted that, the main objective of STATCOM is to regulate voltage at its terminal by changing the amount of reactive power exchanges with the power system and POD is a secondary function provided by this device. This paper proposes the application of the residue factor method to obtain the best location of STATCOM for damping oscillations. The residue factor used is related the critical oscillatory modes. Also presented in this paper is a comparison of power system stabilizer (PSS) and STATCOM for the enhancement of oscillations damping. IEEE 14-Bus test system was used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for placement and the comparison of PSS and STATCOM on damping oscillations. From the simulation results it is seen that STATCOM has better ability in damping oscillation when compared to PSS.