Optimal Setting of FACTS Devices using Particle Swarm Optimization for ATC Enhancement in Deregulated Power System

In electricity supply industries, the word deregulation is disassembly of original structure and reassembly into another form for better efficiency, performance and to draw private sector investment. The major concerns in deregulated power market are transmission pricing, congestion management and Available Transfer Capability (ATC) that need to be dogged. Among these intriguing challenges, one that needs to be interrogated to provide assured open access transmission service is ATC. The way of improving ATC is either adding transmission facilities or using various FACTS devices. In this paper, our concern is incorporation of FACTS, a semiconductor based control devices to enhance the ATC of transmission system. Various FACTS devices like STATCOM, SSSC and UPFC are modeled by power flow equations and optimally set the FACTS parameters by particle swarm optimization (PSO) technique in such a way so as to enhance ATC in the deregulated electricity environment. This replaces the audacious job of erecting new transmission system or expanding the existing one. The non iterative, simple and fast Power Transfer Distribution Factors (PTDF) based sensitivity method is adopted to determine and enhance ATC on sample six bus system to prove the feasibility of ATC enhancement for bilateral and multilateral transactions.