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This study presents a gravitational search algorithm (GSA) for reactive power dispatch (RPD) problem. RPD is an optimisation problem that decreases the grid congestion with one or more objective of minimising the active power loss for a fixed economic power schedule. The proposed algorithm is used to find the settings of control variables such as generator terminal voltages, transformer tap settings and reactive power output of the compensating devices, in order to active power losses minimisation in the transmission system. In this study, GSA is examined and tested on the standard IEEE 30-bus, 57-bus and 118-bus test systems with different test cases such as minimisation of active power losses, improvement of voltage profile and enhancement of voltage stability. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority and accuracy of the proposed algorithm, and considering the quality of the solution obtained, the proposed algorithm seems to be effective and robust to solve the RPD problem.

Investment on generation system and transmission network is an important issue in power systems, and investment reversibility closely depends on performing an optimal planning. In this regard, generation expansion planning (GEP) and transmission expansion planning (TEP) have been presented by researchers to manage an optimal planning on generation and transmission systems. In recent years, a large number of research works have been carried out on GEP and TEP. These problems have been investigated with different views, methods, constraints and objectives. The evaluation of researches in these fields and categorising their different aspects are necessary to manage further works. This study presents a comprehensive review of GEP and TEP problems from different aspects and views such as modelling, solving methods, reliability, distributed generation, electricity market, uncertainties, line congestion, reactive power planning, demand-side management and so on. The review results provide a comprehensive background to find out further ideas in these fields.

The study presents an improved particle swarm optimisation (IPSO) method for the multi-objective optimal power flow (OPF) problem. The proposed multi-objective OPF considers the cost, loss, voltage stability and emission impacts as the objective functions. A fuzzy decision-based mechanism is used to select the best compromise solution of Pareto set, obtained by the proposed algorithm. Furthermore, to improve the quality of the solution, particularly to avoid being trapped in local optima, this study presents an IPSO that profits from chaos queues and self-adaptive concepts to adjust the particle swarm optimisation (PSO) parameters. Also, a new mutation is applied to increase the search ability of the proposed algorithm. The 30-bus IEEE test system is presented to illustrate the application of the proposed problem. The obtained results are compared with those in the literatures and the superiority of the proposed approach over other methods is demonstrated.

Voltage stability improvement is a challenging issue in planning and security assessment of power systems. As modern systems are being operated under heavily stressed conditions with reduced stability margins, incorporation of voltage stability criteria in the operation of power systems began receiving great attention. This study presents a novel voltage stability constrained optimal power flow (VSC-OPF) approach based on static line voltage stability indices to simultaneously improve voltage stability and minimise power system losses under stressed and contingency conditions. The proposed methodology uses a voltage collapse proximity indicator (VCPI) to provide important information about the proximity of the system to voltage instability. The VCPI index is incorporated into the optimal power flow (OPF) formulation in two ways; first it can be added as a new voltage stability constraint in the OPF constraints, or used as a voltage stability objective function. The proposed approach has been evaluated on the standard IEEE 30-bus and 57-bus test systems under different cases and compared with two well proved VSC-OPF approaches based on the bus voltage indicator L-index and the minimum singular value. The simulation results are promising and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed VSC-OPF based on the line voltage stability index.

In recent years, computational intelligence and machine learning techniques have gained popularity to facilitate very fast dynamic security assessment for earlier detection of the risk of blackouts. However, many of the current state-of-the-art models usually suffer from excessive training time and complex parameters tuning problems, leading to inefficiency for real-time implementation and on-line model updating. In this study, a new transient stability assessment model using the increasingly prevalent extreme learning machine theory is developed. It has significantly improved the learning speed and can enable effective on-line updating. The proposed model is examined on the New England 39-bus test system, and compared with some state-of-the-art methods in terms of computation time and prediction accuracy. The simulation results show that the proposed model possesses significant superior computation speed and competitively high accuracy.

Distributed generations (DGs) are recently in growing attention as a solution to environmental and economical challenges caused by conventional power plants. In this study, a multi-objective framework as a nonlinear programming (NLP) is proposed for optimal placement and sizing of DG units. Objective functions include minimising the number of DGs and power losses as well as maximising voltage stability margin formulated as a function of decision variables. The objective functions are combined into one objective function. To avoid problems with choosing appropriate weighting factors, fuzzification is applied to objective functions to bring them into the same scale. DG units are placed at more efficient buses rather than end buses of radial links as usually determined by previous methods for improving voltage stability. Also, power system constraints including branch and voltage limits are observed in the problem. The proposed method not only is able to model all types of DG technologies but also it employs adaptive reactive limits for DGs rather than fixed limits. In addition, a three-stage procedure is proposed to gradually solve the multi-objective problem in order to prevent infeasible solutions. Also, a new technique is proposed to formulate the number of DGs without converting the NLP problem into mixed-integer NLP. Results of testing the proposed method show its efficiency.

In this study, a novel approach is proposed for fast prediction of dynamic voltage instability occurrence (as a short term phenomenon and/or a long term one) and voltage stability stiffness of the system, against load disturbances. The main contribution of this paper is in introducing a procedure for generating novel features to be applied to a pattern classifier, by which dynamic voltage stability status of a power system can be predicted. The proposed feature generation procedure only needs measured pre-disturbance variables and disturbance severity provided by phasor measurement units as inputs whereas a set of output variables are derived from an unconstrained power flow program. Since the proposed method does not need any measured post disturbance data, the prediction task can be performed just after the disturbance. Thus, corrective actions can be executed in a short time after the disturbance to inhibit voltage instability. Moreover as no measured post-disturbance data are needed, the proposed method can also be employed in preventive procedures for voltage stability enhancement and/or decreasing possibility of voltage instability occurrence. Training a decision tree based classifier with the proposed features and testing the method on a modified version of Nordic32 test system, the simulation results have demonstrated that the proposed method effectively predicts the status of dynamic voltage stability in the test system.

This study proposes a stochastic optimisation model for the day-ahead scheduling in power systems, which incorporates the hourly demand response (DR) for managing the variability of renewable energy sources (RES). DR considers physical and operating constraints of the hourly demand for economic and reliability responses. The proposed stochastic day-ahead scheduling algorithm considers random outages of system components and forecast errors for hourly loads and RES. The Monte Carlo simulation is applied to create stochastic security-constrained unit commitment (SCUC) scenarios for the day-ahead scheduling. A general-purpose mixed-integer linear problem software is employed to solve the stochastic SCUC problem. The numerical results demonstrate the benefits of applying DR to the proposed day-ahead scheduling with variable RES.