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This work was funded by the African Union Commission under the Platform of Pan African University Scholarship for postgraduate students.

This paper presents a comprehensive review on the application and control of Flexible Alternating Current Transmission Systems (FACTS) devices in order to improve voltage stability of power grid with high share of renewable energy systems. The rise in the development of renewable energy technologies is driven by the attempts to mitigate the effects of global warming. In addition, global energy demand continues to rise as new electricity-driven systems such as electric vehicles are being developed and as remote locations are being connected to the grid. These changes in the power grid formation comes with attendant challenges which must be addressed. One of these challenges is voltage stability issues. This paper therefore explores the applications of FACTS devices for voltage stability improvement and points out the future research direction in the area of voltage stability enhancement by FACTS devices for modern power grids characterized by increasing levels of renewable energy penetration.

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Worldwide, utilities are aiming to increase the stability of modern power systems during system disturbances. Optimizing generation scheduling can improve system security in contingency and stressed conditions while lowering losses and generation costs. An efficient operating strategy for maintaining power system stability is proposed in this work. The paper focuses on incorporating a Voltage Collapse Proximity Index (VCPI) in the traditional optimal power flow problem for multiobjective optimization (MO). Different case studies are assessed to evaluate the impact on the control variables. A Preference Selection index (PSI) is utilized to determine the best-case study for optimal system operation. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is tested on standard IEEE 30-bus and IEEE 57-bus during normal, contingency, and stressed conditions using MATPOWER. During normal conditions, the MO voltage stability constrained optimal power flow (VSC-OPF) increases the system stability by 28.13 % higher than the single objective (SO) case. Furthermore, the transmission losses are lowered by 14.69% with the proposed MO approach. During line outage contingency conditions, the voltage stability enhancement and loss reduction are higher in the MO than in the SO case by 13.60% and 23.19%. However, the loss minimization and stability improvement during normal and contingency conditions come at a slightly higher generation cost of 5.05% in both systems. On the other hand, during stressed conditions, the SO performs better in voltage stability improvement (by 8.77%) and loss reduction (by 6.97%) than in the MO voltage stability constrained OPF. Additionally, PV Curve analysis for the two systems indicates that voltage stability in MO OPF problems provides a more significant margin enhancement of 9.00%, 118.95% in normal and contingency, respectively, higher than the SO case. However, the SO case increases the load margin by 12.36% more than the MO case in stressed conditions. Consequently, the PSI ranks the multiobjective optimization of the three objectives as the most optimal way for operating the systems in normal and line outage contingency conditions. However, during increased load conditions, the system performance is better if a singular objective function is considered. This is due to the lack of adequate reactive power generation during stressed conditions, and hence a singular objective focus is sufficient to assure system stability. Therefore, the proposed approach is an effective preventive control measure for possible voltage collapse in typical power systems. The resulting improvement also brings about a sufficient system stability margin, causing the system to become more secure.

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The increasing penetration of wind energy to the conventional power system due to the rapid growth of energy demand has led to the consideration of different wind turbine generator technologies. In fault conditions, the frequency of the power system decreases and eventually leads to speed differences between the grid and the interconnected wind generator. This can result to power system problems such as transient instability (TS). This paper focuses on enhancing the TS of a permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG)-based power system during 3ph fault conditions using FACTS devices. The power system considered is connected to a large wind farm which is based on PMSG. Critical clearing time (CCT) is used as an index to evaluate the transient state of the system. Under the study of an IEEE-14 bus system using PSAT as a simulation tool, the integrated CCT with PMSG-based wind turbine is improved with three independent FACTS devices. One of the synchronous generators in the test system has been replaced at random with the PMSG-based wind turbine which is meant to generate an equivalent power. Time domain simulations (TDSs) were carried out considering four study cases. Simulation results show that the (CCT) of the system with the FACTS devices is longer than the CCT without them, which is an indication of TS improvement.