Placement of STATCOM in a wind integrated power system for improving the loadability

Voltage instability is a major problem that is attracting worldwide interest because of its consequence of voltage collapses. These days' Kerala power system operate closer to their stability limits because of the economic considerations, making large amount of power transfer from long distance and an inadequate supply of reactive power which contribute to system voltage instability that eventually leads to voltage collapse. So the stability margin has to be estimated and to know the loadability of the power system is essential in the real time system for voltage stability assessment. This paper investigates the enhancement of voltage stability using Static Compensator (STATCOM) in a wind integrated Central Travancore wind integrated power system. Wind energy is gaining attention among a variety of renewable energy resources mainly because it is a clean source of energy, renewable and also its running cost and maintenance cost is very less compared to other energy sources. Wind generation requires some device to smoothen the output from a wind turbine and a STATCOM connected to the bus performs this operation along with the property of voltage stability enhancement. The studies made in this paper are done with power system analysis toolbox (PSAT), a powerful toolbox in MATLAB for power system analysis.