Optimal Capacitor Switching In Distribution Network Based On Wide-area Reactive Power Control

With the continuous social development and flying improvement of people's living standard, the requirement for power quality is becoming higher and higher. Keeping the balance of reactive power is one of the essential conditions to guarantee the power quality in system. In modern power system, capacitor is usually adopted as reactive power supply because more users'load is inductive. In order to reduce the delivery of reactive current in distribution network and transmission line, decrease the active loss and investment in circuits, it's necessary to process reactive compensation in distribution network.Firstly, in this paper we studied in depth the principles, devices and modes of reactive compensation in distribution network, and analyzed the factors which affect capacitors bank switching. In view of the characteristics of flow calculation, a kind of reliable control model for reactive optimizing is built, in which, back/forward sweep method is chosen as the flow calculation of reactive optimizing. This model can make a more comprehensive and relevant analog of reactive distribution, with a better guiding significance for reactive compensation.Secondly, the genetic algorithm (GA) is intensively researched and analyzed for its relative merits of applying to reactive optimizing in distribution network. On account of the shortage of traditional genetic algorithm, a new algorithm–wide area genetic algorithm is presented in this paper combining wide area control theory with genetic algorithm. This algorithm renovated GA by three parameters in wide area optimizing, so it can get the optimal solution in a short time, and is more effective than traditional GA.Finally in this paper the wide area genetic algorithm is applied to the reactive optimization in distribution network. Combining with the real-time technology in wide area measurements, the capacitor optimizing switching is programmed in Matlab by using the wide area genetic algorithm, and applied into reactive optimizing model. Then the optimal switching scheme is obtained as a result. The practices verified the superiority and effectiveness of the method presented in this paper.