Reactive Power Planning

Reactive Power Planning is one of the most intricate power systems optimization problems. It is defined as the optimal location of reactive power compensation devices as well as determining their types and sizes while minimizing the investment and power losses costs and maintaining an adequate voltage profile. This book presents an application of the Differential Evolutionary Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm for solving the Reactive Power Planning problem with wind power penetration. Fixed and switched capacitor banks, TCR, SVC and STATCOM are installed and sized to minimize the investment and power losses costs and the voltage deviations from the nominal value. Initially, four different deterministic scenarios are tested and the results demonstrate that planning the purchase and installation of new devices in the network based solely on this kind of scenarios is not reliable. Then, two different values of voltage deviation validate the probabilistic model and offer insight on its behaviour. Finally, it is presented a trade-off analysis between the maximum allowed voltage deviation and the power losses.