Abstract
This study tackles high power generation costs and emissions in power systems with Line Commutated Converter-based High Voltage Direct Current (LCC-HVDC) integration. Although LCC-HVDC reduces costs and emissions, it demands substantial reactive power support. To address this, three shunt capacitors (SCs) are added to lower costs and improve performance. An optimization model minimizes generation costs and emissions under varying load levels using the Backtracking Search Algorithm (BSA) for its robust global search and constraint-handling capabilities. The IEEE 30-bus system is used under three different load levels to evaluate performance. The study examines three cases: the base system, the system with HVDC, and the system with HVDC and SCs. Results show that integrating HVDC and SCs reduces generation costs and emissions considerably. For nominal load, the cost dropped by 15.28% with HVDC and SCs. The BSA was more efficient in optimization than the Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm.