Optimal Placement and Sizing of STATCOM to Improve Power Quality Considering Wind Generation

utilizing wind energy as distributed generation resources cause voltage drops in grids because of the nature of induction machine which used in it. Therefore, voltage profilehad been always a concern in grids which have large wind farms. Nowadays, Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) devicesbecome a strong tool to improve dynamic voltage profile and control the power flow in power system lines. One of the most important components of these devices is static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) that has the capability of dynamic tracking of the voltage magnitude at the installation point.However, because of some reasons such as high price of the FACTS devices in addition to installation and maintenance costsit is very important to find optimal location and size of these devices for utility grids. This paper investigates the application of the Genetic Optimization Algorithm (GA) to find the optimal place and capacity of the STATCOMs in order to improve the voltage profile of a network that have wind farms as distributedgeneration. Also the stochastic behavior of the wind speed has been considered to approach the actual condition of the windgeneration. Therefore, the bus voltages in the network have fluctuations corresponding to the changes of the reactive power that absorbed by the wind turbines in the farms. For validation purposes this method has been applied to IEEE 14-bus test system including two wind farms at different places

Keywords:

wind generation , voltage profile , FACTS , statcom , genetic algorithm