A Review and Comparison of FACTS Optimal Placement for Solving Transmission System Issues

The current social impact of new transmission and distribution lines and the growth in environmental requirements has not lead to the expansion of the electric power grid but to the optimization of the existing assets. Flexible AC Transmissions Systems (FACTS), developed during the last decades of the past century, have become one of the most remarkable solutions for the optimization of the electrical power grid. Due to their flexibility, different types of FACTS have been proposed to solve similar transmission system operation problems. This paper reviews the FACTS devices used for solving these problems and the techniques used to optimize their location. The objective of the paper is to serve as a guide for selecting the right power system analysis and optimization technique for a given transmission system problem, and the most used FACTS for this purpose. The main operation issues that have been considered are: voltage control, assets optimization, line overloads and grid congestion, voltage stability problems, angle stability problems, contingencies and economic issues. In this study, the power system analysis and optimization methods have been divided into four main groups: classic optimization methods, technical criteria based methods, heuristic or meta-heuristic based methods and simulation based methods.