Reactive Power and Voltage Control of Nigerian Grid System Based on Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm

Reactive power and voltage control in electrical power system leads to simultaneous minimization of the real power losses and enhancement of voltage profiles at affected customers’ buses. To achieve these goals available generating units’ excitation systems, discrete tap positions of on-load tap changer of transformers are adjusted as well as switching of discrete doses of inductors and capacitors etc. at load buses. This is mixed integer non-linear optimization problem with the existence of multiple optimum solutions. Thus, there is a need to develop intelligent technology to achieve the global optimum solution. This paper presents the application of Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) Algorithm to solve the optimization problem using the above-mentioned control devices. The effectiveness of the developed algorithm has been demonstrated on standard IEEE 30 bus network and real 54-bus Nigeria 330kV grid system modelled in MATPOWER under three different loading scenarios. Simulation results on IEEE 30 bus revealed that the algorithm was able to achieve real power loss reduction of 0.9646%, 0.6384% and 6.01% while for 54-bus Nigeria 330kV grid system real power loss reduction of 9.497%, 7.45% and 10.12% was procured for 80%, 100% and 120% loading conditions respectively. For both system studies, the algorithm was able to eliminate the voltage limits violations. The approach was able to procure significant power loss reduction and eliminate the voltage limits violations by restoring them within limits. This thus leads to reduction in the cost of energy to the consumers and voltage profiles enhancement; hence improvement in the network power quality and voltage stability.