Voltage Profile Improvement Analysis of Laukahi Feeder Using Capacitor Bank and Solar PV

Master's Thesis from the year 2019 in the subject Physics - Electrodynamics, grade: 3.75, Kathmandu University (School of Engineering), course: Master in Planning and Operation of Energy System, language: English, abstract: This thesis report is an attempt to identify the causes and probable solution of voltage profile issues in the Terai part of Nepal, specifically focused on Laukahi feeder. This radial feeder, Laukahi, is approximately 65km and distributed with 11KV system voltage where the inception point is Inaruwa sub-station and terminates with various parts of Sunsari district, Nepal.

Currently, many villages farther than this substation are getting extremely poor voltages with frequent interruption of the power supply. Irrigation projects and grinding mills located at these places are unable to operate at its optimum capacity. In addition, small consumers are unable to run electrical appliances all the time in a day, not even an electric fan in hot season. To analyze this problem, identical system has been developed in MATLAB, and possible solutions are recommended.

Solar PV and Capacitor banks are using as an active and a reactive power generating sources have to penetrate at suitable buses of the system in order to improve the voltage profile of the feeder and to reduce the branch loss as well. Suitable size and location of the DG sources has been identified by using Ant Colony Optimization techniques. After integrating the active sources and reactive sources, branch losses of the system have been significantly reduced and the voltage profile has been improved at permissible level. IEEE 33 bus and IEEE 10 bus system has been adopted to validate the test results.