The Use of Static Var Compensator (SVC) In Transmission Congestion Management of a Restructured Nigerian Power System

ABSTRACT The restructuring of power system is expected to always result in an increased overloading of the transmission networks due to increased activities of power system investors. These activities usually lead to the congestion on the transmission line. Transmission congestion has very negative consequences on the power systems which include system collapse and severe system damage. Nigerian power system has an average operational generation capacity of 3,879MW with a total installed generation capacity of 12,522MW. It therefore becomes necessary to access the readiness of the transmission lines for increased power system activities. In this paper, a comprehensive load flow study was carried out on 41-bus Nigeria power systems and voltage violations were observed in 16 buses.  Two basic methods used in congestion management are cost-free and non-cost free methods. The Static VAR Compensator (SVC) is a cost-free method that was applied in this work. SVCs were placed in the 16 buses while an Optimal Power Flow (OPF) solution was run. The result obtained showed that the bus voltage profile of the power system network was improved and returned to the acceptable limits of 0.95pu – 1.05pu while the MVA flow of the lines was also balanced. All simulation work was carried out in Power System Analysis Toolbox (PSAT) in MATLAB 2014 Software.