2014 International Conference on Power System Technology (POWERCON 2014)
2014
Active Control of Power Flow in Distribution
Network Using Flexible Tie Switches
Zhicheng Li, Jinghan He, Member, IEEE, Xiaojun Wang, Tony Yip, Guomin Luo, Member, IEEE
 regulating method and the switching frequency of switches.
Abstract—To accommodate high penetration of distributed
generation (DG), the distribution network is moving towards the
direction of active control and active management. This paper
presents a new type of flexible tie switch (FTS), installed in place
of traditional sectionalizers or tie switches, which can be applied
for active power flow control in a distribution network. FTS can
potentially optimize the existing network capacity so as to
accommodate more DGs. In order to analyze its effectiveness, the
simplified mathematical model of FTS in dq coordinates was first
derived. The dynamic power control performance of FTS was
studied in PSCAD with typical dual closed-loops control
algorithm adopted. Minimum network losses and voltage profile
optimization were set as the goal of power flow control.
Multi-objective optimization function which takes FTS as control
variable was built, considering voltage deviation constraint,
capacity limitation of FTS and its power losses. Hybrid particle
swarm algorithm was used to search for optimal solution under
different load level conditions. Results show that the network
losses are reduced significantly and the voltage profile is also
optimized, when FTSs are used for power flow control in a
distribution network.
Index Terms—Flexible Tie Switch (FTS); active distribution
network; power flow control; hybrid particle swarm algorithm
I. INTRODUCTION
W ith the rapid increase of distributed generation (DG)
penetration, the problem of power transmission
constraints due to the original distribution network is becoming
more critical. Also, network re-planning and building new
distribution lines in urban distribution network are faced with
the lack of power distribution corridors and the expensive
construction cost [1]. Thus, the distribution capacity of the
existing network needs to be fully utilized. Secondly, the
intermittent DG outputs will cause quick variations of power
flow, which may cause overloading of distribution equipment.
Traditional distribution network uses sectionalizers and tie
switches to realize network reconfiguration to control power
flow [2]. However, it is difficult to manage the intermittency
and volatility of DG outputs due to the limitations of traditional
Manuscript received August 1, 2014. This work was supported in part by the
National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 51277009, the
National High-tech R&D Program of China (No. 2011AA11A102), the
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (NO. 2013YJS082).
Z. Li, J He, X Wang, T Yip and G Luo are with the National Active
Distribution Network Technology Research Center, School of Electrical
Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, 100044, China (e-mail:
11117362@bjtu.edu.cn).
POWERCON 2014 Paper No CP0719
Chengdu, 20-22 Oct.
Therefore, new technology and methods need to be adopted to
achieve active and flexible power flow control in a distribution
network.
Active distribution network is an important trend in the
future development of distribution network. At least 24
innovative active distribution network projects are being
carried out by 11 countries and areas around the world [3]. To
achieve the flexible adjustment of distribution network
topology and the flexible control of power flow, the relevant
institutions and experts have been doing a lot of research in the
aspects of theoretical analysis, simulation modeling, control
and protection, key equipment design and manufacturing.
Foreign research institutions have proposed multiple devices
according to different control targets of distribution network: 1)
Decoupling interconnecter was put forward in Canada, which
can realize the mutual offset of power flow between different
distribution networks in steady state, also can limit the
short-circuit current in the condition of fault. 2) Loop power
controller was put forward in Japan, which can realize loop
operation of distribution network and optimize the power flow
among feeders [4]. 3) Soft normally-open point was put
forward in UK, which is helpful to form a hybrid system type
possessing the benefits of both radial and meshed systems
(simplified protection scheme and high reliability) with the
primary drawbacks (lack of isolation between feeders) removed
[5]. Power router was put forward in the Netherlands, which
can strengthen the networking operation flexibility of
distribution network [6]. However, China still stays in the
infancy state in this field. The related technical research needs
to be accelerated as quickly as possible.
Flexible Tie Switch (FTS) is a new kind of tie switch based
on power electronics technology. Compared with traditional
disconnecters and circuit breakers, it can accurately control the
active power and reactive power flow between the two
connected feeders. Moreover, FTS also has the advantage of
fast response speed, ability of frequent action and continuous
control. This paper focuses on analyzing the usefulness of FTS
in optimizing the network capacity in order to accommodate
more DGs. Firstly, the mathematical model of FTS in dq
coordinates and its corresponding dual closed-loops control
strategy was analyzed. A case study of FTS modelling in
PSCAD was carried out to test the dynamic power control
features of FTS. On this basis, taking FTS as power flow
control unit, hybrid particle swarm algorithm was used to study
its application in the active power flow control of distribution
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 2014 International Conference on Power System Technology (POWERCON 2014) Chengdu, 20-22 Oct. 2014

network. Also, a case study based on IEEE 33 nodes test system B. Control Strategy
was carried out for verification. When the AC systems on both sides stay in three-phase
symmetric steady-state, Ed1,2 is constant and Eq1,2 approximates
0. An inspection of (4) reveals that the power output of FTS
II. FLEXIBLE TIE SWITCH will vary linearly with dq axial current component.
Accordingly a dual closed-loops control strategy is adopted for
A. Mathematical Model
FTS, as shown in figure 2.
FTS is mainly made up of all-controlling power electronics
components. FTS could be implemented by different devices,
such as loop power controller and soft normally-open point.
Back-to-back voltage source converter (VSC) is one of the
major ways of implementation, which is shown in figure 1. C is
a capacitor for DC voltage support. L1 and L2 are AC filter
inductance. R1 and R2 are the equivalent resistance of the power
losses of FTS. This paper takes back-to-back VSC as an
example to study the dynamic response characteristic of FTS.

Fig. 2. Dual closed-loops control strategy of FTS.

The outer loop is used to determine the dq axial current

component reference of id and iq on the grid-connected side
Fig. 1. Circuit structure diagram of FTS. according to the upper control objectives of FTS. The inner
loop is used to control the modulation voltage output of VSC.
Through the accurate control of fundamental component of
The simplified mathematical model of FTS is given in dq modulation voltage, actual current output of FTS can fast track
coordinates [7, 8], as shown in equations (1), (2) and (3). the reference value given by the outer loop, so as to realize the
corresponding control targets.
FTS can exchange the outer loop control objectives of VSCs
ª R1 º ª U dc md1  Ed1 º on both sides according to actual needs, to realize the accurate
« L Z »
d ªid1 º ªid1 º «« L1 »
(1)
control of active power, reactive power and the voltage on the
« » « 1 »« » » connected AC side. However, judging by Eq. (3, 4), active
dt ¬iq1 ¼ « R1 » ¬iq1 ¼ « U dc mq1  Eq1 » power flowing through FTS can transfer smoothly only if DC
« Z  »
L1 ¼
« »
¬ ¬ L1 ¼ voltage is maintained to a constant. Therefore, VSCs on both
E U m sides of FTS need to coordinate with each other. Usually, one
ª R2 º ª d2  dc d2 º
« L Z » VSC is used to stable the DC voltage, the other is used to adjust
d ªid2 º ªid2 º «« L2 »
(2) the transmission of active power.
« » « 2 »« » »
dt ¬iq2 ¼ « R2 » ¬iq2 ¼ « Eq2  U dc mq2 » C. Dynamic Response Characters
« Z  »
L2 ¼
« »
¬ ¬ L2 ¼ FTS was modelled as shown in figure 1 in PSCAD. A case
dU dc md1id1  mq1iq1 md2id2  mq2iq2 study was carried out to test the dynamic response
 (3) characteristics of FTS under dual closed-loops control strategy.
dt C C The simulation parameters were set as: R1,2=0.01 ȍ, L1,2=5m H,
C=600 ȝF, Udc=30 kV. The nominal voltage on AC side was
Where Ed1,2 and Eq1,2 are dq axis component of the voltage on
10kV. The rated capacity of FTS was 2 MVA.
both AC systems. id1,2 and iq1,2 are dq axis component of the
Step response can reflect the instantaneous adjustment
current on both AC systems. is angular frequency. Udc is DC
features of the controllers. In addition, the bi-directional power
voltage and idc is DC current. md1,2 and mq1,2 are dq axis
components of the switch modulation function. adjustment ability of FTS also needs to be tested. Hence, test
When the two AC systems connected by FTS stay in 3-phase process arrangement was set as shown in table 1.
symmetric steady-state, the power output of FTS could be
TABLE I
represented as (4), ignoring the power losses of FTS [9]. TEST PROCESS ARRANGEMENT OF FTS
t/s P/MW Q1/Mvar Q2/Mvar
­ 3
° PFTS 2
Ed id  Eq iq  U dc idc 0.0 0 0 0
® 3 (4) 0.5 1 0 0
°QFTS Eq id  Ed iq 1.0 1 1 0
¯ 2
1.5 1 1 1

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 2014 International Conference on Power System Technology (POWERCON 2014) Chengdu, 20-22 Oct. 2014

2.0 -1 1 1 III. ACTIVE CONTROL OF POWER FLOW IN DISTRIBUTION

2.5 -1 -1 1 NETWORK
3.0 -1 -1 -1 A. Problem Description
Distribution network generally contains two types of switch:
Dynamic response curves of different FTS parameters under sectionalizers and tie switches. In this research, FTS were used
step test are shown in figure 3. to replace tie switches, as the basic power control unit to
manage power flow in a distribution network. Reducing the
network power losses and improving the voltage profile
throughout the system were set as the main objectives of active
power flow control, which can be described in mathematical
expression (5).

2
L
Pi 2  Qi2 N
V  Vn
min( g ( x )) min(¦ Ri 2
 ¦ bk k ) (5)
i 1 Vi k 1 Vn

Where L represents the total number of feeder lines, Ri is

branch resistance, Pi is active power through each branch, Qi
is reactive power through each branch, Vi is the voltage of the
nodes with power injection, b is the voltage improvement
coefficient, N is the total number of network nodes, Vk is node
voltage, Vn is nominal voltage.
The active power flow control of distribution network in the
process of optimization was set to meet the following
constraints:
1) Power flow constraint

AP = D

Where A is node-branch incidence matrix, P is feeder flow

vector, D is load power vector.
2) Voltage constraints of nodes

Fig. 3. Dynamic response characters of FTS.

As shown in figure 3, DC voltage curve shows two
corresponding disturbances when FTS regulate the
transmission value of active power, which is due to the transient
imbalance of active power in the process of adjustment. It was
found that DC voltage disturbance can easily lead to the
corresponding disturbance of reactive power regulation on both
sides of FTS. Conversely, the mutation of reactive power
within a certain range has a relatively less effect to the DC
voltage regulation as compared to the active power mutation.
These simulation results suggest that the real power flow
through FTS can be controlled rapidly and accurately. Also,
VSCs on both sides of FTS can operate in four quadrants, so
that reactive power set points can be assigned as required,
which can offer flexible reactive power compensation for
distribution network and can be helpful to improve the voltage
quality at FTS interface terminals.
Vl  Vk  Vu ˈk = 1, …, N
Where Vk is node voltage, Vl and Vu are the lower and upper
limit of node voltage, N is the total number of network nodes.
3) Capacity constraint of FTS
2 2 2
PFTS  QFTS d S FTS
Where PFTS is the active power through FTS, QFTS is the
reactive power issued by FTS, SFTS is the nominal capacity of
FTS.
4) Capacity constraint of lines
I l d I up ˈl = 1, …, L
Where Il is line current, Iup is the upper limit of line current, L is
the total number of feeder lines.
B. Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization
Particle swarm optimization algorithm simulates the flock
foraging behavior to solve optimization problem. In the process
of statistical iteration, individual particles modify its direction
and speed of optimization through their own experience and

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 2014 International Conference on Power System Technology (POWERCON 2014)
peers’ experience. The specific process can be defined by
equatons (6) and (7) [10].
vidk 1 w k vidk  c1rand () u ( pid  xidk )
 c2 rand () u ( pgd  xidk )
xidk 1 xidk  v idk 1
Where i = 1, …, Mp, Mp is the total number of individual
particles, and represent the speed and position of
particle i on the d axial component in the k iteration, c1 and c2
are acceleration factors, rand() is a random number in the range
of (0,1), pid and pgd represents the d axial component of current
optimal value discovered by individual and group. w is inertia
weight, to balance the global search ability and local search
ability of the algorithm, can be defined as
( wmax  wmin )
wk wmin  u (G  k )
G of the particles that violate the constraints. It is equal to
Where G is the maximum number of iterations, wmax and wmin
are the maximum inertia weight and the minimum inertia
weight, respectively.
Considering the traditional PSO algorithm easily falls into
local optimal solution, the crossover and mutation operation in
Genetic Algorithm (GA) was introduced to improve the global
search ability of the algorithm. That is, the individual particles
search the optimal solution according to PSO strategy firstly,
then utilizing the GA operation to update the particle position in
the process of optimization [11]. It not only ensures the search
efficiency of particle swarm, but also improves the global
convergence of the algorithm. The flowchart of Hybrid PSO is
shown in figure 4.
Fig. 4. Flow chart of hybrid PSO.
POWERCON 2014 Paper No CP0719
Chengdu, 20-22 Oct. 2014
C. Application of Hybrid PSO in Power Flow Optimization
1) Particle position encoding
Taking FTS as power flow control unit, the active power
through FTS (Psm) and the reactive power provided by FTS
(6) (Q1sm, Q2sm) were set as the position variables of a FTS. So the
encoding of particles is {Ps1, Q1s1, Q2s1, …, Psm, Q1sm, Q2sm},
where m is the total number of FTSs.
2) Fitness function
(7) The value of the fitness function is the basis of particle
swarm optimization. The goal of power flow control is to
reduce the network losses and to improve the voltage profile, as
shown in (5), which belongs to the minimum optimization
problem. Therefore, generally considering the constraints of
optimization, the fitness function can be expressed as
F g ( x )  p( x ) (9)
Where g(x) is the objective function shown in (5). p(x) is the
penalty function for violation of the constraints. The penalty
function is used to reduce the probability into the next iteration
(8)
L N
2 2
p( x ) ¦D i I i  I i lim  ¦ E k Vk  Vk lim
i 1 k 1 (10)
M
 ¦ J j S j  S j lim
j 1
The 3 expressions in the equation correspond respectively to
the penalty functions of violating the line capacity constraint, of
violating the node voltage limit, and of violating FTS capacity
constraint. , and are weighting coefficients of each
expression. Iilim is the limit of line current. Vklim is the limit of
node voltage. Sjlim is the capacity limit of FTS.
3) Condition of convergence
The convergence condition of PSO was set as when the
optimal fitness value range is less than a given error for a
continuous N generation. N, as an integer, can be adjusted
according to the optimization need. Or, the current evolution
generation is equal to the maximum generation setting.
IV. CASE STUDY
A case study based on IEEE 33 nodes test system [12] was
carried out for verification, taking FTS as control unit and
utilizing hybrid PSO algorithm in the optimization of power
flow control. The model structure is shown in figure 5. The
nominal voltage of this system was 12.66kV. The system
contained 33 nodes, 37 branches and 5 tie switches. The total
power of load was 3715kW+j2300kVar. The original tie
switches were replaced by FTSes, as FTS33 ~ FTS37, as shown
in figure 5. The population of particle swarm was set to 20. The
biggest evolution generation was set to 100. The capacity of
FTS was 500kVA and its power transfer efficiency was set to
97%. Line current limit was set to 400A.
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 2014 International Conference on Power System Technology (POWERCON 2014) Chengdu, 20-22 Oct. 2014

Fig. 7. Comparison between optimized volt-profile and original volt-profile.

Fig. 5. IEEE 33-bus test system with FTSes instead of normally-open points.

The impact of voltage amplitude changes on load power

was considered in the process of power flow optimization.
Voltage dependency of loads was modelled using a potential
approach, as shown in equation (11) and (12).

v v
PLoad P0{aP  bP  (1  aP  bP )( ) 2 } (11)
v0 v0 Fig. 8. Active/Reactive power output of FTS 33-37.
and
Moreover, the active power flow control was repeated in
v v (12)
QLoad Q0 {aQ  bQ  (1  aQ  bQ )( ) 2 } different scenarios with light load, normal load and heavy load.
v0 v0 The optimization results are shown in table 2.

Where P0 and Q0 are the load power corresponding to the TABLE II

OPTIMIZATION RESULTS OF POWER FLOW CONTROL
original voltage v0 , PLoad and QLoad are the load power UNDER DIFFERENT LOAD SCALING FACTOR
corresponding to the actual voltage v . (aP, aQ) is the scale factor
Load Scaling Factor 0.5p.u. 1.0p.u. 1.5p.u.
of the load with constant power behavior. (bP, bQ) is the scale
factor of the load with current behavior. (1-aP-bP, 1-aQ-bQ) is Optimal Fitness 0.062p.u. 0.183p.u. 0.373p.u.
the scale factor of the load with impedance behavior. Here aP = Network Losses 0.038MW 0.097MW 0.217MW
aQ = 0.7, bP = bQ = 0.2. Losses of FTSs 0.010MW 0.026MW 0.040MW
The simulation results of active power flow control using
Maximum Voltage Deviation 0.91% 2.95% 6.18%
FTSs are shown as figures 6, 7 and 8. Figure 6 shows the curves
Network Losses
of the fitness function value and the network losses in the of Original Power Flow
0.047MW 0.203MW 0.496MW
process of power flow optimization. Figure 7 shows the Maximum Voltage Deviation
4.17% 8.70% 13.66%
comparison diagram of the optimized voltage profile and the of Original Power Flow
original voltage profile. Figure 8 shows the active power and
reactive power output of FTSs corresponding to the final The simulation results shows that the active power flow
optimization results. control based on FTSs can effectively balance the load among
feeders, reduce the line power losses and improve the voltage
quality of power supply in a distribution network. Especially
under the condition of heavy load, the improvement of network
losses and voltage deviation is remarkable.

V. CONCLUSION
This paper specifically analyzes the dynamic power control
performance of FTS. The role of FTS on active power flow
control in a distribution network was studied, combined with
the PSO algorithm. A case study was carried out and the results
show that the utilization of FTS can effectively reduce the
network losses and improve the voltage profile.
At present, the expensive price of power electronic
components is still an important factor that restricts large-scale
commercial applications of such an equipment as FTS.
Fig. 6. Operational results with active power flow control.
However, with the continuous development of power electronic

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 2014 International Conference on Power System Technology (POWERCON 2014) Chengdu, 20-22 Oct. 2014

technology, based on the demand for the development of active

distribution network, FTS is expected to be gradually applied in
the future distribution network, which could be an important
means to flexibly control the power flow distribution and to
adjust the distribution network topology, so as to improve the
operation level of the distribution system.

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Zhicheng Li received the Bachelor’s degree in Power System Automation., in

2011 from Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing, China. He is working towards
the Ph.D degree at the School of Electrical Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong
University. His research interests include power system protection and control,
active distribution network.

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