Voltage stability assessment of isolated hybrid dish-stirling solar thermal-diesel microgrid with STATCOM using mine blast algorithm

Abstract This paper presents the voltage control of an isolated hybrid diesel-dish-Stirling solar thermal system (DSP) based power system. As DSP is employed with an induction generator (IG), it needs reactive power for magnetic field. Though synchronous generator (SG) is coupled with the diesel generator, SG alone unable to supply sufficient reactive power to cater the reactive power requirement of the consumers load and the IG. Under such circumstances, static synchronous compensator (STATCOM) is used to meet the reactive power demand. The parameters of the controllers employed with the STATCOM as well as automatic voltage regulator (AVR) of the SG are tuned simultaneously applying recently developed mine blast algorithm (MBA). Performance of the MBA based controllers are compared with that of the cuckoo search algorithm (CS), and particle swarm optimization (PSO) based counterpart on the proposed model. Application of STATCOM and MBA based control strategy in diesel-dish-Stirling solar thermal system-based hybrid system for reactive power regulation is a maiden attempt. Extensive simulations of the model for dynamic responses of voltage deviations and reactive deviations under several uncertain conditions, such as step disturbance in reactive power load of the consumers and IG without/ with STATCOM, realistic variations of power output of DSP and reactive load have been carried out. Results analyses indicate that MBA based control strategy is the best amongst all the control strategies attempted here in the terms of maximum overshoot and the settling time. Further, meager values of the maximum overshoot and the settling time under several uncertain conditions justify the coordinated control of AVR and STATCOM to maintain the voltage stability of the isolated hybrid system.