Power Quality Enhancement On The Nigeria Rural Electric System Using Shunt Capacitor Banks

Capacitors are extensively used in power factor improvement. Shunt capacitor banks are the most inexpensive method of reactive power compensation method aimed at providing power factor improvement and voltage support to the transmission system. They are usually connected to the buses or feeders rather than the lines, with the primary purposes being voltage stability control, power factor improvement, and load stabilization.By correcting the receiving end power factor these banks can be used up to a certain limit effectively to increase the voltage stability limits of the system and help preventing low voltage and voltage collapse in many situations.This thesis describes and designs the methodology used to study the power quality enhancement using shunt capacitor to compensate for reactive power demand on the the Nigerian rural electric system with a case study of the Biu-Shani 30MVA 66/11 KV rural feeder transmission line in the Nigeria Power Holding Company Network.A system survey of light and peak load data, and the daily reactive power duration of the feeder were used to construct a reactive load demand versus time curve for the system.The severity of the reactive demand was analyzed using thee daily VAR demand verse the Time duration curve and a Pf index Margin Index. The extreme cases on both end of the Light and peak reactive power demand where then used for the design and development of a shunt capacitor bank reactive power compensation.