Optimization of reactive power under load uncertainty

Abstract

Reactive power demand in power system networks have a significant effect on energy efficiency in the grid. In locations where there are many industries which have a lot of motors running their production, the inductive power demand from the motors reduce the power factor and increase energy losses during transmission and also limits the real power supplied to the electricity consumer. The monitoring of reactive power in the power system network is difficult because of the challenge of estimating the network load at any given time. In this paper, a case study is presented using the IEEE test network to determine the effect of load uncertainty on reactive power. The uncertainty of the load is achieved by using the two point estimate method. Particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to solve the objective function. The results show that load uncertainty have a significant effect on estimation of reactive power in the system network.