Locating series FACTS devices for multi-objective congestion management improving voltage and transient stability

•Locating FACTS devices by conventional methods makes power systems vulnerable.•The proposed multi-objective method gives an economical and robust solution.•Multi-objective method proposes a different TCSC location with more efficiency. Transmission congestion management is a vital task in electricity markets. Series FACTS devices can be used as effective tools to relieve congestion mostly employing Optimal Power Flow based methods, in which total cost as the objective function is minimized. However, power system stability may be deteriorated after relieving congestion using traditional methods leading to a vulnerable power system against disturbances. In this paper, a multi-objective framework is proposed for congestion management where three competing objective functions including total operating cost, voltage and transient stability margins are simultaneously optimized. This leads to an economical and robust operating point where enough levels of voltage and transient security are included. The proposed method optimally locates and sizes series FACTS devices on the most congested branches determined by a priority list based on Locational Marginal Prices. Individual sets of Pareto solutions, resulted from solving multi-objective congestion management for each location of FACTS devices, are merged together to create the comprehensive Pareto set. Results of testing the proposed method on the well-known New-England test system are discussed in details and confirm efficiency of the proposed method.