TCSC Controller Design using Global Optimization

for Stability Analysis of Single Machine Infinite-Bus

Power System
Rashmi Vikal*, Garima Goyal*
Department of Electrical Engineering
PEC University of Technology

Chandigarh, India
Abstract This paper presents modeling, simulation and
optimal tuning of Thyristor Controlled Series
Compensator (TCSC) controller for the improvement of
stability of a Single Machine Infinite-Bus (SMIB) power
system. Different controller structures namely Lead-Lag
(LL) and a proportional-integral-derivative PID for TCSC
controller have been proposed and a comprehensive
assessment of the effects of the tuned TCSC controller on
test power system have been carried out. The controller
parameters have been tuned using global optimization
(multistart clustering GO) for IAE performance index of
the power system. The proposed GO based TCSC
controllers damp out the oscillations in the state variables
of the SMIB system in 7 seconds while the settling time of
the state variables for the system without TCSC controller
is greater than 10 seconds when the test disturbance of 3phase fault occurs at generator terminals.
Keywords- Global Optimization, lead-lag controller,
proportionalintegral-derivative controller, Phillips-Heffron
model, SMIB, power system stability, TCSC.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Power systems are in general nonlinear systems and the

operating conditions can vary over a wide range. Recently,
small signal stability has received much attention [1]. The
increasing size of generating units, the loading of the
transmission lines and the high-speed excitation systems are
the main causes affecting the small signal stability.
The accurate assessment of power system stability has become
increasingly important as power systems are stressed to meet
the demand of modern market operation. To meet this
demand, it is essential to raise the transmitted power along
with the existing transmission facilities. The need for the
power flow control in electrical power systems is thus evident.
With the increased loading of transmission lines, the problem
of power system stability after a major fault can become a
transmission power limiting factor. A system is said to be
stable if the restoring forces produced by it are sufficient to
overcome the disrupting force. Small signal stability is related
to disturbance of range 0.1-2 Hz. These oscillations are
produced by small change in the system. The frequency of
oscillations is higher in the generator which is nearest to load.

Therefore, system requires a controller to damp out these

oscillations [1, 2].
By the means of flexible and rapid control over the AC
transmission parameters and network topology, flexible ac
transmission systems (FACTS) technology can facilitate the
power control, enhance the power transfer capacity, decrease
the line losses and generation costs, and improve the stability
and security of the power system. For the analysis of small
signal stability accurate representation of system dynamics
along with tuned FACTS controller is essential [2]. The
thyristor-controlled series capacitor (TCSC) is an important
device in the FACTS family. It has various applications
related to operation and control of power system, such as
scheduling
power
flow,
decreasing
unsymmetrical
components, limiting short-circuit currents, mitigating subsynchronous resonance (SSR), damping the power oscillations
and enhancing transient stability [3,4].
Investigations involving small disturbance analysis consider
the linearized model of the power system. However, linear
methods cannot properly capture complex dynamics of the
system, especially in the event of major disturbances.
Nevertheless, the dynamic assessment of SMIB power system
with FACTS is done by considering the higher-order
synchronous machine model, which includes one damper
winding along the q-axis, for a power system installed with a
TCSC [4-10].
This paper presents the assessment of SMIB with TCSC in
terms of improvement of stability, when subjected to threephase fault. The design problem to find TCSC controller
parameters is posed as unconstrained optimization problem;
minimizing the performance index (IAE).Two types of TCSC
controller structures namely a lead-lag and PID have been
presented. GO-based tuning algorithm is used to tune the
parameters of these controllers.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II presents the
modeling of SMIB power system with a TCSC. The proposed
controller structures and problem formulation are described in
Section III. A short overview of GO is presented in Section
IV. Simulation results are provided and discussed in Section V
and conclusions are given in Section VI.

978-1-4244-5098-5/09/$26.00 2009 IEEE

II.

MODELING OF SMIB WITH TCSC

A. Power system under study

The general system configuration of single-machine infinitebus power system shown in Fig.1 is considered in this study.
The system has a TCSC installed in the transmission line [11].
The IEEE Type-ST1 excitation system is considered in this
work.

Fig. 1 Single-machine infinite-bus power system with TCSC

Linearized Model [6-10]: In the design of electromechanical

mode damping stabilizer, a linearized incremental model
around an operating point is usually employed [12]. The
linearized expressions are as follows:

Effective TCSC reactance XTCSC() [6-10] with respect to alpha

() is
XTCSC

XC

X
X

X
X

(2)
where,
Xc = Nominal reactance of the fixed capacitor C.
Xp = Inductive reactance of inductor L connected in parallel
with C.
= 2( ) = Conduction angle of TCSC controller
k =Xc/Xp = Compensation ratio
According to the variation of the thyristor firing angle () or
conduction angle (), this process can be modeled as a fast
switch between corresponding reactance offered to the power
system. The TCSC can be controlled to work either in the
capacitive or the inductive zones avoiding steady state
resonance. This mode is called vernier control mode.
III.

STRUCTURE OF THE PROPOSED TCSC

CONTROLLERS

A. Lead Lag and PID Controllers

The commonly used leadlag structure is chosen in this study
as a TCSC controller. The structure of the TCSC LL controller
is shown in Fig.3 and Fig. 4 shows PID controller structure.

(1)
where

B. Thyristor controlled series compensator

TCSC is one of the most important and best known series
FACTS controllers. The TCSC concept uses a simple main
circuit. The capacitor is inserted directly in series with the
transmission line and the thyristor-controlled inductor is
mounted directly in parallel with the capacitor as shown in
Fig. 2

Fig. 2 Equivalent circuit of TCSC

Fig.3 Structure of TCSC based Lead-Lag controller

Fig.4 PID structure of TCSC- based controller

The washout circuit is provided to eliminate the steady state

bias in the output of TCSC. The signal washout block serves
as a high-pass filter, with the time constant TW, high enough to
allow signals associated with oscillations in input signal to
pass unchanged. From the viewpoint of the washout function,
the value of TW is not critical and may be in the range of 1 to

20 seconds [12]. The TCSC gain KT determines the amount of

damping introduced by the TCSC.
B. Problem formulation as an optimization problem
In this work, the design objective of improving the system
stability is posed as an unconstrained minimization of
performance index IAE. The objective function is defined as:
(3)
where; (t) is the speed deviation following a disturbance
and is taken as the error signal.
It is worth mentioning that the TCSC controller is designed to
minimize the power system oscillations after a disturbance (3phase fault) so as to improve the stability. These oscillations
are reflected in the deviation in , , , . The design
problem of proposed controller is transformed into an
optimization problem. It is aimed to minimize the design
objective function in order to improve the system response in
terms of the settling time and overshoots.
IV.

OVERVIEW OF GLOBAL OPTIMIZATION

Global optimization (GO) is a technique to find the extreme

value of a given non-convex (multimodal) function in a certain
feasible region. The task of global optimization is to find a
solution in the solution set for which the objective function
obtains its smallest value, the global minimum.
The strategies employed in the most GO algorithms try to
perform the two conflicting tasks:
exploring the search space-generating points in the
unexplored regions
exploiting the best solutions-using the best points (found so
far) to find even better points
MULTISTART CLUSTERING
In this work, multi-start clustering GO is used. The multi-start
clustering global optimization method called GLOBAL has
been introduced in the late 70s [13]. A general clustering
method starts with the generation of a uniform sample in the
search space S (the region containing the global minimum,
defined by lower and upper bounds). After transforming the
sample (e.g. by selecting a user set percentage of the sample
points with the lowest function values), the clustering
procedure is applied, that is creating groups of mutually close
points that hopefully correspond to relevant regions of
attraction of potential starting points. The region (area) of
attraction of a local minimum x* is the set of points in X
starting from which a given local search procedure P
converges to x* [13, 14]. Then, the local search is started from
those points which have not been assigned to a cluster.
The Steps of the Algorithm are:
1. Set and generate number of sample points (NSAMPL)
points with uniform distribution and evaluate the objective
function. Add this set to the current sample.
2. Select the reduced sample of points. Set k = 0.
3. Set k = k + 1 and select point xk from the reduced sample. If
this point can be assigned to any of the existing clusters, go to
Step 5. If no un-clustered points remained, go to Step 6.
4. Start local search from point xk. If the result is close to any
of the existing minima, add xk to the corresponding cluster.

Else declare the solution as a new local minimum and add

both the solution and xk to a new cluster.
5. If k is not equal to NG [13], go to Step 3.
6. If a termination criterion is not satisfied and iteration is less
than the maximum allowed number of iterations, go to Step 1,
else stop.
V.

SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Simulation studies have been carried out for the test power
system subjected to 3-phase fault disturbance. The responses
have been simulated for 10% increase in mechanical power
input (Pm). Fig.5 to Fig. 8 depict variations without
controller, Fig. 9 Fig. 12 show effect of damping in the
variations of states with LL controller, Fig.13 Fig.16 shows
the effect with PID controller.
The parameters [13] used in GO (multistart clustering) are
given in table 1.
TABLE 1
Parameter
No. of sample points
Maximum no. of clusters
Maximum function evaluations
Maximum CPU time
Local solver

Value/Type
100
20
6
10
6
10
FMINCON

A. Without TCSC Controller

Fig.5 Rotor angle deviation without TCSC controller

Time(sec.)

Time(sec.)

Fig.9 Variation of rotor angle deviation with LL TCSC controller

Fig.6 Variation of speed deviation without controller

Time(sec.)

Time(sec.)

Fig.10 Variation of speed deviation with LL TCSC controller

Fig.7 Variation of Eq without controller

Time(sec.)

Time(sec.)

Fig.11 Variation of Eq with LL TCSC controller

Fig.8 Variation of Efd without controller

B. Lead-Lag Controller
The parameters of LL TCSC controller are tuned using GO
optimizing IAE. The transfer function of TCSC controller is

0.64
0.07

3.96
0.02

14.11 10
1 1 10

For the test power system with LL TCSC controller, the

variations for various states are given as under.

Time(sec.)
Fig.12 Variation of Efd with LL TCSC controller

Time(sec.)
Fig.15 Variation of Eq with PID controller

C. PID Controller
The transfer function of tuned PID TCSC controller is

2.16

34.98
1.74 10
1 10 2.16

With PID TCSC controller, following are the variations of the

states.

Time(sec.)
Fig.16 Variation of Efd with PID control

It is clear from these figures that the proposed TCSC-based

controller significantly damp out power system oscillations
with lower settling time.
VI.

Time(sec.)
Fig.13 Response of rotor angle deviation with PID control

CONCLUSION

In this study, different structures of TCSC controllers, namely

lead-lag (LL) and proportional-integral-derivative (PID) are
tuned for the performance index of IAE using GO and the
performance of the proposed controllers are tested on SMIB
power system under three phase fault disturbance. It is
observed that the effect of TCSC controller in the test power
system damp out the oscillations in the states faster than when
controller is not present in the power system as shown in the
following tables.
Table 2
Parameter

Time(sec.)
Fig.14 Speed deviation response with PID control

(without
controller)

(LL
controller)

(PID
controller)

First
(rad.)
0.28

peak

Settling
(sec)
10

0.20

0.25

time

(13)

Table 3
Parameter

(without
controller)

(LL
controller)

(PID
controller)

First
(p.u.)
2.2x10-3

peak

Settling
(sec)
10

-4

1.8x10-3

1.1x10

time

(14)

Eq (without
controller)
Eq
(LL
controller)
Eq
(PID
controller)
Table 5
Parameter
Efd (without
controller)
Efd
(LL
controller)
Efd
(PID
controller)

(15)

(17)

v
First
(p.u.)
0.11

peak

Settling
(sec)
10

0.10

0.09

(16)

Table 4
Parameter

time

(18)

sin
K
K
K

Settling
(sec)

time

VB
XE

XE

XE

X
XE

X
X

(19)

sin

(20)
(21)

VB sin

(22)

First
undershoot
(p.u.)
-1

10

(23)

-1

(24)

-0.8

cos

sin

Block diagram of SMIB system

The system block diagram, consisting of the representation of
rotor swing equations, flux decay and excitation system, is
obtained by combining the component blocks. The overall
block diagram i.e; Phillips-Heffron Model of SMIB is shown
in Fig. 17.

APPENDIX

(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
(9)

Fig.17 Phillips-Heffron model of SMIB system with TCSC

(10)

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(11)

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(12)

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Rashmi Vikal received the M.Tech Degree in Electrical Engineering from

Guru Nanak Engineering College, Ludhiana, India. Currently, she is lecturer
in PEC, University of Technology, Chandigarh, India. Her areas of research
include optimization techniques, robust control, adaptive control.
Garima Goyal is pursuing M.E. in Electrical Engineering from PEC,
University of Technology.