Implementation of Particle Swarm Optimization Technique in Designing Power System Stabilizer

In the past, fixed conventional power system stabilizers are designed based on linearized model of power systems for particular operating conditions. These stabilizers are effectively used for damping out low frequency oscillations. When the Power System is suddenly loaded or removed, it is subjected to oscillations which results in increased settling time i.e., the system becomes unstable. Hence the conventional Power System Stabilizer is not effective. So in order to overcome the disadvantage and to enhance the system damping, the generators are equipped with modern Power System Stabilizers that provide supplementary feedback stabilizing signals in the excitation systems. This can be designed by a heuristic method called PSO which is a robust stochastic optimization technique that works based on the movement and intelligence of swarms. It uses a number of agents (particles) that constitute a swarm moving around in the search space looking for the best solution. It is preferred in order to achieve the optimal Eigen value for system stability and to reduce the settling time. Hence this technique holds best to tune the Power System Stabilizer parameters based on Settling time, Peak overshoot and Computation time.