Optimal Location and Parameter Settings of UPFC Device in Transmission System based on Imperialistic Competitive Algorithm

In this paper, we present a new method to determine the optimal location and parameter settings of Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC) for removing voltage violations and transmission lines overloading. UPFC is considered as the most powerful member of the FACTS devices, that it can control shunt and series power flow. This option gives to UPFC the power to control the voltage profile and transmission lines flow simultaneously. We used the Imperialistic Competitive Algorithm (ICA) to determine the optimal location and optimal parameter settings of UPFC to improve the performance of the power system specially removing voltage violations in the buses and solving transmission lines overloading to increase loadability in the power networks. This procedure is proposed to be applied on IEEE 14 bus system to show the validity of the method.