Utilising distributed reactive power to increase network connection capacity Article Swipe
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· 2020
· Open Access
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· DOI: https://doi.org/10.1049/oap-cired.2021.0022
· OA: W3196484793
The energy industry is seeing a shift to an increased amount of small generators embedded within the distribution network from the traditional centralised dispatch of large generators at the transmission system. The increasing number of distributed generators results in new constrains on the distribution systems and traditionally would have resulted in the installation of more network infrastructure. This project investigates the potential to control the reactive power of existing generators within the distribution network to increase the available capacity for new connections as a potential flexibility service. This study presents a potential service using an optimisation algorithm to determine the optimum generator reactive power to reduce either voltage, reactive power flow or a combination of both. The optimisation algorithm makes use of a particle swarm optimisation to test multiple different reactive power set-points and find the global optimum. Time series results are presented showing that optimising for voltage or reactive power reduction increases generation connection capacity, but no single method is suitable for all generation and load conditions. The combined method trialled in this study does not achieve a balance between voltage and thermal headroom to increase the connection capacity through the use of a weighting factor calculated prior to optimisation.
