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Abstract
Consistent increase in the demand for electrical energy often leads to heavy loading of transmission lines. One of the consequences of this is that such transmission systems are subjected to imbalance in the reactive power and hence voltage instability and reduction in real power of the system. Conventional methods of enhancing voltage stability and improving efficiency have proven to be slow and difficult to control. A new approach, however, is the use of Flexible AC Transmission System (FACTS) controllers. This paper applied Unified Power Flow Controller (UPFC), a member of this class of devices to Nigeria’s 330kV transmission system using MATLAB. Obtained results showed an improvement in the voltage magnitude of bus 9 and bus 13 from 0.9896 and 0.9765 to 1.02 and 1.0199 respectively. Also, the active power loss was reduced by 2.53% from 85.177MW to 83.025MW when UPFC was applied. Incorporation of UPFC improved the system’s voltage stability and reduced active power losses. The UPFC could therefore be deployed to minimize prolonged and frequent voltage instability in transmission networks and enhance system efficiency.