The Placement of Facts Devices in Modern Electrical Network

A combination of lack of investment and environmental issues results in lack of building of new transmission infrastructure. This leads to a requirement for better utilisation of existing the transmission network. Flexible AC transmission system (FACTS) controllers are widely used for this purpose. However, due to their cost the wide spread use of such devices is limited. Thus the problem exists of where/how to use these resources (devices) in a modern network setting, which is operated under competitive trading. Furthermore, the effect of high penetration of the intermittently renewable generation into the system, a consequence of predicted fossil fuel shortage in the near future, is taken into account. This is a new setting for this allocation problem. There are many ways to quantify the benefits of FACTS controllers. In studies to date, the available transfer capability (ATC) is used as this represents a network wide measure of benefit. Results are shown to agree with those of previous studies. Specifically, this paper will present the background of FACTS, ATC and the optimisation method to be considered as part of the research work into FACTS placement on the network