Optimal Distribution System Planning with Voltage Control

Abstract

The power system operation intends to satisfy load demand at all locations within a power newlinenetwork with considerations such as economy of operation, system reliability, system newlinesecurity, and carbon emission in the generation, etc. Due to drastic growth in demand, there newlineis a need to upgrade/add capacity of generation and transmission system. However, due to newlineincreased transmission and distribution costs, global exhaustion of fossil fuels, deregulation newlinetrends, advancements in technologies and concerns about the environmental impacts, newlineinstallation of an adequate number of small scale generation units rather than adding a few newlinelarge central generation units is emerging as an effective solution to meet the increased newlinedemand. Such small scale generation is commonly referred to as distributed generation newline(DG) or dispersed generation. It provides a lot of benefits to utilities and consumers, such newlineas the reduction in power losses; enhancement in voltage profile, improved power quality, newlineand reliability improvement all due DG being near the premises of consumers. The other newlinemajor benefits are a deferral of system upgrades, reactive power support, standby newlinegeneration, and peak shaving. Size of DG usually ranges from a few kW to several MW. It is newlinerapidly becoming attractive because of awareness on environmental issues like global newlinewarming. Renewable energy sources are now becoming the most significant sources of newlineenergy in modern power scenario. Geographical, environmental, political and financial newlinefactors of different countries are leading a fast increase in the use of renewable energy newlineresources. newlineAlthough DG has many advantages, it can degrade the performance of the newlinedistribution system, if not planned carefully. Some issues that need to be considered during newlinethe planning are voltage instability because of the varying output of DG, the mismatch newlinebetween generation power patterns of DG especially PV with load pattern, coordination of newlineDG with available voltage controllers, voltage instability due to an outage of line or newlineequipment.