USING TCSC DEVICES FOR OPTIMAL ECONOMIC DISPATCH

Murat Fahriog̃lu Fernando L. Alvarado

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

The University of Wisconsin – Madison

Abstract 1 Thyristor Controller Series

This paper describes a TCSC (Thyristor Con-
trolled Series Capacitor) model relating its vari-
able series reactance to the firing angle. It uses
this model to control the series reactance of a line
in order to minimize system losses and the gener-
ation costs of a system. This is achieved by alter-
nating between an optimal economic dispatch pro-
gram and a program that varies the reactance(s)
until a minimum loss point is reached. The vari-
able reactance routine adjusts the reactance on se-
lected lines and updates the Ybus used in the eco-
nomic dispatch program. A 5 bus system example
is presented.
Keywords: FACTS, TCSC, variable reactance,
optimal economic dispatch.
Compensation
We can control the series impedance of a trans-
mission line by adding capacitors in series with
the line. This allows us to reduce the total series
impedance and lets us send additional power across
the line. Nowadays FACTS devices are being ex-
perimented with in their ability to control the net
series impedance of a transmission line which in
turn affects the power transfer equation shown be-
low:
Es Er
P = sin δ (1)
X
Es is the sending end voltage magnitude,
Er is the receiving end voltage magnitude,
δ is the angle between Es and Er ,
X is the series reactance of the line.

Introduction
likewise
Er (Es cos δ − Er )
FACTS (Flexible AC Transmission Systems) de- Q= (2)
vices provide us with control over the AC transmis- X
sion systems. By using these devices we can push i2(t)
C
transmission lines to their thermal limits [3]. This
way we can update the existing lines and delay
construction of new lines. We also add flexibil-
ity which may be used to increase the efficiency
of energy transfer and decrease the cost of genera- i(t)

tion. The Thyristor Controlled Series Capacitor is L

the FACTS device considered in this paper. Refer-

ence [5] talks about FACTS devices and economic i1(t)

dispatch. In this paper we use MATLAB to do

simulations for small systems. V(t)

Fig. 1: A simple circuit model of the TCSC

.
As shown in Fig. 1 the TCSC consists of thyris-
tor controlled reactors (TCR) in parallel with ca-
pacitors. This configuration allows the fundamen-
tal frequency capacitive reactance to be smoothly
V(t)
V (t) = Vm cos(wo t) (3)

Vm
i1 (t) = (sin(wo t)−sin(wo α)) α ≤ t ≤ T /2−α
i2(t)
wo L
(4)

Vm
i1 (t) = (sin(wo t)+sin(wo α)) T /2+α ≤ t ≤ T −α
wo L
i1(t) (5)
i1 (t) = 0 otherwise.
α

i2 (t) = −wo CVm sin(wo t) (6)

i(t)
Doing a Fourier Series analysis on i1 we see that
the fundamental of i1 is :

2 Vm
a1 = (0.5π − wo α − 0.5 sin(2wo α)) (7)
π wo L
π
Let θ = wo α, where 0 ≤ θ ≤ 2
Fig. 2: Capacitor voltage, capacitor current, in- 2 Vm
ductor current and total current respectively a1 = (0.5π − θ − 0.5 sin(2θ)) (8)
π wo L
We see that :
controlled over a wide range and switched to a con-
dition where bidirectional thyristor pairs conduct i(t) = (a1 − wo CVm ) sin(wo t) (9)
continuously and insert an inductive reactance into substituting (6) into (7) we get :
the line. The plots for the currents and the voltage
across the capacitor is shown in Fig. 2.
2
i(t) = Vm ( (0.5π−θ−0.5 sin(2θ))−wo C) sin(wo t)
πwo L
(10)
To see things easier we can write this as:

i(t) = Vm Y (θ) sin(wo t) (11)

As we can see Y (θ) is the admittance of the line
which can be controlled by changing θ.
1
Let XL = wo L and XC =
wo C

1 θ sin(2θ) 1
Y (θ) = (1 − − )− (12)
XL 0.5π π XC

Instead of using α (in seconds) or θ (in radians),

we prefer to define a new control variable:

2θ sin(2θ)
1.1 Derivation of the model γ(θ) = 1 −
− (13)
π π
Looking at the graphs in Fig. 2 we can see: where 0 ≤ γ(θ) ≤ 1, θ = wo α
 2.2 Procedure:
γ(θ) 1
Y (θ) = − (14) 1. Compute the Ybus of a given system (data
XL XC
given in common format).
finally
2. Provide the cost functions for all the genera-
XL XC tors in the system.
X(θ) = (15)
γ(θ)XC − XL 3. Compute penalty factors for the system and
achieve optimal dispatch in terms of total gen-
1.2 Summary of the model:
eration cost by equalizing penalized genera-
The model for the TCSC shall be implemented tion incremental costs.
as
4. Vary the reactance on selected lines in a way
Es Er to minimize system losses.
P = sin δ (16)
X 5. Repeat steps 1-4 to reach an optimal point in
the system in terms of generation cost.
2θ sin(2θ) π
γ(θ) = 1 − − 0≤θ≤ (17) 2.3 Explanation of the algorithms used in
π π 2
each step

XL XC 1. The Ybus program forms the Ybus from a

X(θ) = (18)
γ(θ)XC − XL
We explore how to use this model to lower the
cost of generation for a given system assuming mul-
tiple TCSC device locations and undergoing opti-
mal economic dispatch. We choose our TCSC lo-
cations randomly, but further work is under way
to select the best location based on the techniques
of [6] and [4].
2 Optimal Economic Dispatch and TCSC
All programs used in this work were written as
MATLAB m-files.
2.1 Idea
Our program first achieves economic dispatch for
the given system and finds the P and Q for each
2. The optimal dispatch routine is based on the
generator. Then, holding all the powers constant
except at the slack bus,it varies some line reac-
tances trying to reach a minimum slack bus power.
It uses the secant method. It takes two calculated
points and estimates the third one in a direction
that will minimize the slack bus power with respect
to the control parameters. Then it updates the
Ybus for the system with the new reactance values
of the controlled lines and calls the ecenomic dis-
patch routine again to reach a new optimal point.
It repeats this procedure until the system cost will
not fall any further.
given common format file. Once the data is
in MATLAB, Ybus is constructed “by inspec-
tion” [2]. In this program we also initialize the
variables needed to solve the optimal dispatch
conditions. For example, the voltages and an-
gles are initialized to a flat start. Then we
specify the cost functions for the generators,
and the needed P and Q injections. All this
information gets used in the optimal dispatch
routine. To summarize:
• Form Ybus
• Initialize voltages and angles (flat start)
• Initialize P and Q injections for the load
buses
• Specify the cost functions for the gener-
ators in the system
knowledge of the incremental costs of the gen-
erators and the transmission penalty factors.
Computation of the penalty factors is based
on the algorithm in reference [1]. In order to
utilize this algorithm we initially form the Ja-
cobian for the load flow
" #
H N
J=
M L
where
Nij + jHij = Vi Yij∗ Vj∗ (19)
Y is the admittance matrix for the system, 3. After the optimal dispatch routine comes the
and V is the vector of bus voltages. The fol- optimization with respect to line reactance.
lowing are properties of this Jacobian: Our goal is to reduce the slack bus power by
adjusting series reactance on some lines, sat-
Hij = Lij = −Mij (20)
X isfying the powerflow equations and holding
Hii = − Hij (21) other powers constant. Optimization seeks
j∈c zero crossing of the derivative of slack bus
X
Mii = Nij (22) power with respect to the control parameters
j∈c (in our case the control parameters are the
where c means all the busses connected to bus line reactances). The derivative term consists
i. of two parts:
If we let B be the imaginary part of Y and G (i) The direct change in slack bus power with
be the real part, then respect to line reactance.
(ii) The change in slack bus power with re-
Lii = −Hii − 2Bii |Vi |2 (23) spect to voltages and angles of adjacent buses,
2 which in turn are influenced by line reactances
Nii = Hii + 2Gii |Vi | (24)
of distant lines.
While doing this we also solve for the load-
flow (since we already have the Jacobian) and df ∂f ∂f dv
= + (27)
obtain new values for the bus voltages and an- du ∂u ∂v du
gles for our next iteration. Then we remove where
the row and the the column corresponding to f is the slack bus power
the slack bus (bus 1 in our case) from the Jaco- u is the vector for control variables
bian. Then using the formulation in reference v is the voltages and angles of the powerflow
[1] we solve formulation.
 t df
∂P1 We are interested in getting a value for .
J tβ = − (25) du
∂v ∂f
From equation (27), we know is the first
for β and compute ∂v
row in the Jacobian. Then the only unknown
1 dv
Li = (26) is which we can get from the following
βi du
equation. Let P∗ be all the bus powers in the
where
system except slack. Then:
Li is a number proportional to the actual
penalty factor.
dP∗ ∂P∗ ∂P∗ dv
J is the Jacobian after the slack is taken out. = + (28)
∂P1 du ∂u ∂v du
is the row in the Jacobian that corre-
∂v Since the assumption during this step is that
sponds to the slack bus (in our case the first
row). we keep all the powers constant except the
dP∗
v is the voltages and angles of the powerflow slack bus power, then is equal to zero.
du
formulation. Thus:

Now that we have the penalty factors of each ∂P∗ ∂P∗ dv

=− (29)
generator we compute their incremental costs, ∂u ∂v du
and then use the equal incremental cost crite- ∂P∗
We already have from the Jacobian, and
rion to solve for new power generation levels ∂v
for the generators. We repeat this procedure ∂P∗ ∂f
we can compute and , so if we solve
until the product of the incremental cost and ∂u ∂u
dv
the penalty factor is the same for each gener- for from (29) we have all the partials we
du
ator. At that point we have an optimal dis- df
patch generation level. need to compute .
du
 df
Our goal is to find a zero crossing of . One
du 2
way to do this is to find the second derivative 1
terms (the Hessian). To avoid the additional
complexity this would have caused, a secant
method was chosen instead. So the algorithm
df
calculates two points on the curve and esti-
du
mates the third one using the secant method. 3
5
Then the Ybus is modified accordingly and
returned to the optimal dispatch routine, and
another optimization with respect to genera-
tor powers is carried out to reach a lower cost
of generation.
The restriction that all other bus powers must
be held constant determines the manner in
which system voltages and angles vary with 4
changes in line reactances. Most of the infor-
mation required for computation comes out
of the power flow calculation using Newton’s
method, and thus this is available at the be-
ginning of each iteration. There is a power
flow solver loop included in the optimal dis-
patch routine, which we extracted and made Fig. 3: One line diagram of our 5 bus system
available to this routine.

4. Finally we have a master routine that calls all

the appropriate modules in a loop to help the
system settle to a lower cost of generation at
each iteration.
3 An Example Study on a 5 Bus System
First we chose a small system to test our ideas
and algorithms. The one line diagram of this sytem
is shown in Fig. 3.
dispatch and the TCSC routines back to back until
the total cost stops going down any further. We
try this using several TCSC locations. First we
tried our model on just one line (line from bus 4 to
bus 5) and managed to reduce the total generation
cost by 2.11% for our system, but when we used
two controlled lines (2 to 3, 4 to 5) we managed to
go even lower and get a reduction of 4.83%. The
plots for these two tests are shown in Fig. 4.

Table 1: Network Branch Information

4 Conclusion
from to R X charging
1 2 0.042 0.168 0.0205
1 5 0.031 0.126 0.0155 The location of the TCSC matters quite a bit.
2 3 0.031 0.126 0.0155 When we were controlling just one line we could
3 4 0.084 0.336 0.0411 see the difference in the cost reduction when we
3 5 0.053 0.21 0.0255 changed the TCSC location. There is a specific
4 5 0.063 0.252 0.0305 location that gives us the best result, but when
we use another controlled line in addition to this
one the result gets even better. A summary of our
When we run our program with this system we test results is presented in Table 3. Techniques for
can see a gradual decrease in total system cost as selecting the best location for TCSC are discussed
we go through our master loop that calls optimal in detail in [6] and [4].
 27.6 tuning to damp system oscillations. In Semposium of
Specialists in Electric Operational and Expansion Plan-
ning (SEPOPE), Foz do Iguacu, Brazil, May 1994.
27.4
[5] G. N. Taranto, L. M. V. G. Pinto, and M. V. F.
Pereira. Representation of FACTS devices in power sys-
27.2 tem economic dispatch. Transactions on Power Sys-
Total cost of generation

tems, 7(2):572–6, May 1992.

27 [6] W. Xu, Y. Mansour, F. Alvarado, and C. Rinzin. Svc
placement using critical modes of voltage instability. In
Proceedings of the Power Industry Computer Applica-
26.8 tions Conference, Scottsdale, Arizona, May 1993.

26.6

26.4

26.2
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
no. of iterations

Fig. 4: Top:TCSC on 4-5; Bottom: TCSC on 2-3

and 4-5

Table 2: Summary of the tests

Controlled Lines Percent decrease in cost

2-3 4.22
3-4 0.91
4-5 2.11
2-3,4-5 4.83

Acknowledgement

We acknowledge the support of Electric Power

Research Institute (RP 3022-33) under the super-
vision of Aty Edris. Also the help of Andrew Szabo
and Steven Leovy during the development of the
software.

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