Abstract
The power industries daily compensate for the rising demand for electric power globally by installing new transmission lines or efficiently operating the current ones, thus transmitting more electricity from one specific point to another. However, building new transmission lines is highly challenging due to the high cost and regulations. In addition, the flow of electricity is predominantly along an undesirable path, and its stability is always affected by voltage fluctuation in the transmission lines. An intelligent approach to mitigating this problem is to control the flow of electric power effectively and efficiently in the transmission line system. This work outlined the basic operational comparison concepts of Flexible Alternating Current Transmission System (FACTS) devices of the Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC)and the Distributed Power Flow Controller (DPFC) based on their respective active power exchange. The UPFC incorporates a common dc-link between its shunt and series converters. The DPFC operates without the common D.C-link, splitting the three-phase series converters into many single-phase series distributed converters via the transmission line. The operational comparison between UPFC and DPFC is modeled and simulated in Matlab/Simulink environment to illustrate their control capability in the flow of electric power. The simulation results show the performance enhancement reliability of the DPFC in improving the voltage stability and power transfer capability over the UPFC.
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