Security assessment and improvement of the Iraqi super high-voltage grid (400 KV)

Security constraint optimal power flow study was attracted the researchers over the last decades by using different successful artificial algorithms. However, a little focus has been given to the application of differential evolution (DE) in these studies. This paper presents a study to evaluate and improve the static security of the Iraqi super high-voltage grid at 400 kV (ISHV). By evaluating the security of the power system, secure and insecure operating conditions are determined in the network. An appropriate control action is suggested to alleviate the insecure operating situations in order to avoid the occurrence of a disturbance in the system, which can transfer the system to an emergency state. For this purpose, a security constrained optimal power flow (SCOPF) is used to evaluate and address the overload on transmission lines and voltage violations for buses that arise when the system is exposed to an emergency state. The proposed formulation also takes into account security constraints, including the branch flow limits and bus voltage limits. An evolutionary optimization technique, namely, differential evolution (DE), is adopted to solve the SCOPF problem and improve the security of the grid. The proposed technique is applied to the ISHV to assess and improve the security of the network. The results clearly reveal that the suggested algorithm is effective in getting the optimal contribution from the generating rescheduling.