LP-based OPF for corrective FACTS control to relieve overloads and voltage violations

In the restructured power industry environment, use of flexible ac transmission systems (FACTS) elements for steady-state corrective control has great economic advantage compared with other corrective control strategies, such as generation rescheduling and load shedding. Due to the requirements of both speed and accuracy for online corrective control, a new linear programming (LP)-based optimal power flow (OPF) algorithm for corrective FACTS control is proposed in this paper to relieve overloads and voltage violations caused by system contingencies. The optimization objective is chosen to minimize the average load-ability on highly loaded transmission lines. A new set of parameter sensitivities of FACTS devices are derived to include the operational constraints of FACTS devices during optimization. In order to reduce the effect of errors due to linearization, all sensitivities can be updated during the OPF iterations. The algorithm is implemented with MATLAB and tested on the New England 39-bus system and the WECC 179-bus system. The simulation results show that the proposed LP-based OPF algorithm is effective, fast, and accurate in finding the optimal parameter settings for FACTS devices to solve the problem of overloads and voltage violations.