Power system damping enhancement using unified power flow controller (UPFC)

The Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC) can inject voltage with controllable magnitude and phase angle in series with a transmission line. It can also generate or absorb controllable reactive power. UPFC is expected to be able to damp power system oscillations more effectively than power electronics devices such as SVG and TCSC. In this paper, a control system design of a UPFC for power system damping enhancement based on the eigenvalue control method is proposed. It is made clear that the best design method for the power system damping enhancement is to determine steady-state values of the UPFC control variables and the control parameters of the UPFC such as gains and time constants simultaneously, because the controllability of UPFC depends on the steady-state values of UPFC and the power flow condition. The effectiveness of the proposed control system taking into account UPFC inverter ratings is verified by digital time simulation. Furthermore the effects of the input signals to the UPFC controller on small-signal stability and transient stability enhancement are studied, and it is made clear that UPFC controllers using global information are more effective for power system damping enhancement than those using local information because global information has stronger observability for power system oscillations than local information. © 2000 Scripta Technica, Electr Eng Jpn, 133(3): 35–47, 2000