Application of Static Synchronous Compensator for Improvement of Power System Transient Stability

Transient stability is the power system’s ability to maintain synchronism when exposed to severe disturbances such as loss of generation, rapid load changes, transmission lines tripping, switching operations and faults. Transient instability causes cascading outages, system collapse and economical losses. This study employed static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) for power system transient stability improvement. The system’s steady state and transient responses were respectively modelled with Newton-Raphson power flow and modified-Euler linearized swing equations. A balanced three-phased short circuit fault was introduced on selected buses for transient stability analysis. The steady state and transient responses of the system were simulated with and without STATCOM. The critical fault clearing time (CFCT) was obtained from the generators’ swing curves. The IEEE 9-bus and 14-bus power networks were used as test cases. The voltage magnitudes of all buses in both networks fell within the specified 0.95 to 1.1 p.u. voltage limit with and without compensation. The total active line loss on IEEE 9-bus and 14-bus networks which were 4.641 and 13.514 MW without compensation reduced to 4.600 and 13.014 MW, respectively with STATCOM’s application. The total reactive line losses of both networks which were 92.160 and 31.393 MVAr without compensation decreased to 90.160 and 30.693 MVAr, respectively with STATCOM’ utilization. The CFCT for fault on bus 8 of the IEEE 9-bus system without compensation were 0.2100 and 0.2700 s for generators 2 and 3, respectively. The system’s stability was, however, extended beyond 0.2700 s due to compensation from STATCOM. In the case of IEEE 14-bus system, the CFCT for fault on bus 6 was 0.36364 s for generators 2, 3, 4 and 5, respectively without compensation. The STATCOM inclusion, however, enhanced the system’s stability beyond 0.36366 s where all the four had lost synchronism. This work established that the use of STATCOM on the considered networks appropriately extended the CFCT such that the stability of the systems was not lost in the event of fault application via robust compensation of reactive power.