Electrical Power and Energy Systems 24 (2002) 271276

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Optimal volt/var control in distribution systems

Yutian Liu a,*, Peng Zhang a, Xizhao Qiu b
a

Department of Electric Power Engineering, Shandong University, 73, Jingshi Road, Jinan 250061, People's Republic of China b Electric Power Control Center, Shandong Electric Power Company, Jinan 250001, People's Republic of China Received 20 May 2000; received in revised form 20 October 2000; accepted 28 February 2001

Abstract A new approach to optimal reactive power and voltage control in radial distribution systems is proposed in this paper. The optimal control is to nd a proper dispatch schedule for shunt capacitor banks and on-load tap changer at substation and shunt capacitor banks on feeders so that the power loss is minimized and the voltage prole is improved. To reduce computation burden, the whole control is decomposed into two sub-problems, namely sub-problem on substation level and sub-problem on feeder level. A simplied dynamic programming and a fuzzy logic control algorithm are used to deal with the two sub-problems, respectively. Coordination of the two algorithms provides an appropriate solution to the whole control problem. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed approach is effective and feasible. q 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Reactive power/voltage control; Distribution system; Fuzzy logic control

1. Introduction Volt/var control in distribution systems can improve voltage proles for all end-use customers and reduce real power losses which conventionally involves regulation of load tap changer (LTC) of the substation transformer, switchable capacitor banks installed at the substation and along distribution feeders, etc. A number of approaches based on mathematical optimization algorithms, such as non-linear, linear, quadratic programming, Newton and interior point method have been proposed to optimal volt/var control in power systems and distribution systems [16]. Yet they may not be adequate for on line application because of complexity, non-linear nature, size, and the difculties in treating with discrete constraints. Dynamic programming (DP) can overcome some of the shortages. Optimal switching strategy of feeder capacitors and dispatch scheme of LTC and capacitors at substation for next 24 h are, respectively, determined using DP and hybrid methods [711]. Fuzzy logical and fuzzy logical control have many advantages and have been widely used in power systems [914]. However, when the substation and feeders are comprehensively considered, the number of control means and their operating states becomes large and the dimensional exploration disas* Corresponding author. Tel.: 186-531-2955-081; fax: 186-531-2955999. E-mail address: liuyt@sdu.edu.cn (Y. Liu).

ter prohibits the direct applications of DP to real-time optimization control. The overall problem is decomposed into two subproblems to reduce computation burden: sub-problem 1 at substation level for dispatch of LTC and capacitor banks at substation and sub-problem 2 on feed level for capacitor banks control along feeders. A dynamic programming method is used to solve the rst sub-problem and fuzzy control is adopted to solve the second. Two algorithms are appropriately coordinated by power ow check and the whole object is optimized, subject to system constraints including the bus voltage limits and the maximum allowable number of switching operations of LTC and capacitor banks. The focus of this paper is the development of a new approach to optimal volt/var control with a comprehensive consideration of control means at the substation and along feeders. The scheme is elaborated in Section 2. Test results and the conclusions about the new method are followed, respectively. 2. Optimal volt/var control methodology A typical radial distribution system is shown in Fig. 1. The LTC is used to keep the secondary bus voltage prole closed to the rated value under all load conditions. Shunt capacitor banks connected to the substation secondary bus are used to compensate the reactive power ow through the

0142-0615/02/$ - see front matter q 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0142-061 5(01)00032-1

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The TAP position that makes tact closest to tide is desirable, and thus the tact can be determined. The study period of DP is divided into N stages (N 24; namely, one stage means an hour). The data structure of the state of control variables at substation is dened as statei; j TAPi ; Ci ; i 1; 2; ; N ; j 1; 2; ; NS 4

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of study system.

main transformer and those on feeders are used to improve the voltage prole along feeders. We assume that there are only two feeders in the distribution system to facilitate representation, and the LTC has 17 taps changing in [210%, 10%], and all the switching capacitors have three banks. Owing to distribution management system (DMS) and especially the supervisory control and data acquisition system (SCADA), the real and reactive loads of main transformer, the primary as well as the secondary bus voltage and the loads along feeders can be monitored and recorded. Therefore, loads at each bus and substation primary bus voltage can be obtained by short-term load forecast techniques [14,15]. 2.1. Substation volt/var control At substation level the LTC and shunt capacitor banks at substation are incorporated into the optimal control problem and a simplied DP method is used for optimization. The main transformer ratio estimation formula [9] is ( t u ZT u 2 2 2 V0 V1 " V2 QL 1 1 kuZT u !2 #)1=2 1 P2 L 1

where TAPi (28, 2 7,,0,1,2,,7,8) indicates the tap position in hour i of the next day; Ci (0,1,2,3) denotes the number of capacitor banks to be switched on in hour i and NS is the number of all the possible states in a stage. The objective is to nd a set of TAPi and Ci such that the cumulative I 2R loss of the whole distribution system is minimized and the deviation of secondary bus voltage from the specied value (1.0 p.u.) is kept as small as possible. Operational constraints involve the voltage limits of each bus and maximum allowable number of switching operations of control means in a day. The sub-problem 1 can be formulated as 9 N N X X > > min J wf 1 QLi 1 wf 2 uV1;spec 2 V1i;act u > > > > i1 i1 > > > > > wf 1 J1 1 wf 2 J2 > > > > = s:t: Vmin # Vl # Vmax 5 > N X > > > uTAPi 2 TAPi21 u # KT > > > i1 > > > > N > X > > > uCi 2 Ci21 u # KC ;
i1

where ZT is the transformer impedance; PL and QL are its real and reactive load, and the coefcient kis dened by k 3uZC u 3uZC u 2 muZT u 2

where ZC denotes the capacitance of total capacitor banks at substation and m is the number of capacitor banks to be switched on. The ideal transformer ratio tide can be obtained by substituting V1 1.0 p.u. into Eq. (1). In practice, the transformer ratio takes discrete values. The actual ratio can be represented as tact 1 1 0:0125 TAP 3

where QLi is the reactive power load in hour i and it can represent the real power loss to some extent; V1,spec the specied voltage of bus 1; V1i,act the actual secondary bus voltage at hour i; wf1 and wf2 the weight factors for the real power loss and voltage deviation, respectively; subscript l denotes load bus; and KT, KC are the maximum allowable number of switching operations for LTC and shunt capacitor banks, respectively. Since there are 17 possible values for TAPi and four values for Ci, there would be NS 17 4 68 states in each stage. To nd the optimal solution of sub-problem 1 using DP, 68 24 1632 times of distribution system power ow calculation should be carried out. To relieve the computational burden, the following procedure is adopted. First, the `ideal' tap position TAPi,ide is obtained by Eqs. (1)(3). Then, only three tap positions which are closest to TAPi,ide, viz. TAPi,ide and TAPi,ide ^ 1, are saved in each stage. Thus the number of total combinations of TAPi and Ci is reduced to 3 4 12; and consequently the burden of power ow calculation is signicantly reduced. This is called as simplied DP method [9] at substation level. A recurrence formula is employed to compute the

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NB (negative big), NM (negative middle), NS (negative small), ZE (zero), PS (positive small), PM (positive middle), PB (positive big) for DV and NB, NM, NS, ZE for Dpf are the linguist variables. 2.2.2. Rule base The fuzzy control rules are as follows: Rn : if DV is NB and Dpf is ZE; then CC is CCn where CC represents the change in the state of shunt capacitor banks; CCn denotes an integer assigned to crisp variable CC in nth rule, which can take a crisp value from {23, 2 2, 2 1,0,1,2,3}; n 1; 2; ; Nr and Nr 4 7 is the number of total rules. The fuzzy control rules are tabulated in Table 1 in which, for example, 23 denotes switching off three banks while 2 represents switching on two banks. 6 2.2.3. Fuzzy reasoning and output The used fuzzy reasoning is associated with the use of Mamdani's mini-operation rule as a fuzzy implication function and sup-min operation as a compositional operator [12]. The crisp inputs DV and Dpf are treated as fuzzy singletons. Then the ring strengths an of the nth rule may be expressed as

Fig. 2. Membership function of voltage and power factor.

minimum objective function arrived at state i; j J i; j min J i 2 1; k 1 JH i; j

{k }

where {k} denotes the set of all feasible states that can reach state (i, j) from stage i 2 1; JH(i, j) is the objective function for state (i, j), that is JH i; j wf 1 QLi 1 wf 2 uV1;spec 2 V1i;act u 2.2. Capacitor fuzzy control Sub-problem 2 is to obtain control scheme of feeder capacitor based on local information. Capacitor banks on a distribution feeder can reduce real power loss and improve voltage prole along the feeder. A fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is employed to determine the states of feeder capacitors in this section. Generally speaking, the FLC provides an algorithm that can convert the linguistic control strategy based on expert knowledge into an automatic control strategy [12,13]. The process to build a FLC is stated as follows. 2.2.1. Fuzzication Two universes of discourse, viz. DV and Dpf, deviations of voltage and power factor from their expectation at buses on which the shunt capacitor banks are installed, are employed. A linear (uniform) mapping is adopted to transform the measurements. For instance, a measured voltage p p deviation denoted by DV p varying within DVmin ; DVmax is transformed into continuous universe of `voltage' [DVmin, DVmax], viz. a closed interval [26, 6], by
p p DV DVmin 1 DVmax =2 1 kV DV p 2 DVmin 1 DVmax = 2 8

an mDVn DV ^ mDpf n Dpf

10

For given inputs DV and Dpf, the control scheme of feeder capacitor can be deduced

CC0

an CCn n1 Nr X
n1

Nr X

11

an

Assumed that the state of feeder capacitor banks at a certain bus l in hour i is denoted by Cl,i, thus Cl;i Cl;i21 1 CC0 but Cl;i 3 if Cl;i . 3;
Table 1 Fuzzy control rules CC Dpf NB DV PB PM PS ZE NS NM NB 23 21 0 1 2 3 3 NM 23 22 0 0 1 2 3 NS 23 22 21 0 1 2 3 ZE 23 22 21 0 1 2 3

12 Cl;i 0 if Cl;i , 0 13

where
p p kV DVmax 2 DVmin =DVmax 2 DVmin

The membership functions as shown in Fig. 2 have the forms of triangle-shaped and trapezoidal-shaped functions.

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Note that the FLC is performed hour by hour to determine the on/off schedule of each feeder capacitor within the 24 h period. As frequent switching operations may reduce the life expectancies of switchable capacitor banks, the following switching number constraint for each capacitor 2 is necessary
N X i1

uCl;i 2 Cl;i21 u # Kc

14

2.3. Coordination scheme The sub-problem 1 dispatches LTC and shunt capacitor banks at substation while the sub-problem 2 controls feeder capacitors by local measurements. A coordinated algorithm for the whole control problem is proposed. Its main idea can be described as follows. After solving one stage for the subproblem 1, capacitors along feeders to be switched on or off are assumed by the FLC (or any other controller) according to power ow solution. Before solving the next stage for sub-problem 1, all states of control means obtained in last stage are checked by power ow calculation of which satisfying constraints and with optimal objective are taken as pre-states of states in this stage. Repeating this process until the nal stage, the optimal schedule is got by backtracking. The distribution power ow calculation can be considered as a coordinator. This is explained in detail as follows: Step 1. Input distribution system conguration, parameters of feeders, LTC and capacitor banks, hourly load and voltage forecast data, etc. Step 2. First obtain the `ideal' tap positions TAPi,ideal using Eqs. (1)(3) according to load and voltage forecast. Then get all possible state combinations of LTC and substation capacitors in stage i, viz. state (i, j). Step 3. Perform power ow calculation to get the objective function J(1, j) for each state (1, j) in the rst stage. Correspondingly, the FLC is employed to obtain state of feeder capacitor banks Cl(1, j). Note that the predecessor state of Cl(1, j) is the state of capacitor banks on bus l in the last hour of the preceding day. Let i 2. Step 4. Check constraints in Eqs. (5) and (14) for each state (i 2 1, j) in stage i 2 1. If any constraint is violated, the corresponding state will be discarded. Step 5. Sort the rest states in stage i 2 1 in non-decreasing order of the values of objective functions and seek out the one with the minimum objective value. Step 6. As to the state obtained from step 4, calculate power ow using the input data in stage i 2 1 to check the feasibility. When the power ow calculation is performed, the states of all control means are taken into account together, which is different from power ow in step 3 solely considering states of substation control means. If the voltage magnitude at each bus falls within the lower and upper limits, retain this state and correspondingly the states of all feeder capacitors; the index of the state in stage i 2 1

is stored in an array u(i, j). Otherwise, discard this state and go to step 5. Step 7. Perform power ow analysis using forecast data in stage i to compute the objective function J(i, j) for state (i, j). In the power ow analysis, the feeder capacitor states keep the value of their predecessor state Cl(i 2 1, u(i, j)). Afterwards, the FLC is employed to obtain the change of capacitor state. Then Cl(i, j) with the predecessor state Cl(i 2 1, u(i, j)) can be derived from Eqs. (12) and (13). Step 8. Repeat step 7 until all of the NS states in stage i are dealt with. Step 9. i i 1 1; check the loop stop criterion i # N, if not satised, go to step 4. Otherwise, proceed to the next step. Step 10. The state of substation control means with the least accumulated objective function value among all the states in the 24th stage and, concomitantly, the state of feeder capacitor are chosen as the candidates of the optimal states state24,opt and C24,opt, respectively. Perform a power ow analysis to check whether there is any constraint violation. If not, the optimal states in the nal stage are accepted and the optimal states state24,opt and C24,opt are obtained. Then backtrack from these states and locate all their predecessors. The optimal voltage and reactive power control strategy can be derived from these predecessors and the optimal states. From the procedures aforementioned, main computational burden of this algorithm comes from power ow calculation. Assume that there are n capacitor banks and each have m capacitor in a distribution system. The number of power ow calculations required in the DP algorithm is 17 (m 1 1) n 24 and simplied DP including feed capacitors 3 (m 1 1) n 24. But usually which is in the proposed algorithm may be 3 (m 1 1) 2 24. In fact, even in the worst case not more than 3 (m 1 1) 2 24 times of power ow are required in the proposed algorithm. On the other hand, the fuzzy logical controllers of feeder capacitor banks operate according to the local measurements. It is obviously that the computational burden is much less than that of DP, especially when the number of compensation buses is getting large. 3. Simulation results The proposed approach is implemented using Visual C 11 4.0. The test system is shown in Fig. 1 and system data are from Refs. [7,8]. Let KC and KT equals 6 and 30, respectively. Equal weights wf 1 wf 2 1 are put on voltage control and reactive power control. A back/forward sweep power ow calculation method is employed. The optimal dispatch schedule generated by the proposed approach is illustrated in Table 2. Fig. 3 shows the hourly voltage of an arbitrarily selected bus 13 with and without the control during a day. Fig. 4 shows the real power loss reduction. From Table 2 and Figs. 3 and 4, it is found that a very good

Y. Liu et al. / Electrical Power and Energy Systems 24 (2002) 271276 Table 2 Optimal dispatch schedule Hour 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 TAP 21 21 21 21 21 21 22 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 21 21 21 0 C 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 C9 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 C8 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 J 0.0183 0.0368 0.0487 0.0659 0.0742 0.0962 0.1164 0.1272 0.1382 0.1422 0.1490 0.1578 0.1671 0.1699 0.2227 0.2765 0.3230 0.3595 0.3818 0.4180 0.4772 0.4953 0.5179 0.5398 J1 0.0182 0.0353 0.0392 0.0511 0.0582 0.0695 0.0884 0.0938 0.0946 0.0954 0.0974 0.0979 0.1061 0.1084 0.1101 0.1128 0.1224 0.1401 0.1462 0.1602 0.1699 0.1785 0.1878 0.2027 J2 0.0002 0.0014 0.0094 0.0148 0.0159 0.0266 0.0279 0.0333 0.0436 0.0467 0.0515 0.0598 0.0610 0.0614 0.1126 0.1637 0.2006 0.2194 0.2356 0.2578 0.3073 0.3167 0.3301 0.3370

275

Fig. 4. Power lose reduction.

reactive power and voltage dispatch scheme is obtained. Voltage proles are well improved, power losses are significantly reduced and all constraints are satised. For comparison, the partial results of simplied DP including feeder capacitors are also shown in Figs. 3 and 4. When a convergence precision of 10 25 (0.33 kw) is employed in power ow calculation, the algorithm for the test system spends about 1.0 s of CPU time on a Pentium PC586/166, while the simplied DP spends about 8 s. These results illustrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method for on-line reactive power and voltage control problem. 4. Conclusions This paper has developed an effective and practical

approach for optimal voltage and reactive power control in radial distribution systems. The overall control problem is decomposed into two sub-problems, one of which deals with control of LTC and shunt capacitor banks in distribution substation and the other aims at control of capacitor banks on distribution feeders. Correspondingly, a simplied DP method and a FLC are employed to solve the subproblems, respectively. An algorithm based on coordination of the two methods, which can be viewed as a combination between conventional mathematical optimization method and human-like decision making algorithm, is detailed in this paper. Based on the short-term load forecast, the desired daily dispatching schedule of control means can be reached so that system loss is minimized and the voltage prole of each bus is signicantly improved. Operational constraints for voltage and control means and other physical constraints are considered in the proposed algorithm. This algorithm is quite efcient. It takes about 1.0 s on a Pentium PC586/166 to reach the solution for the test system. In the test example only two compensated buses on two feeders are involved. However, in real large-scale distribution system there may be a great number of capacitors on a feeder. In that case, the storage requirements and CPU time of conventional methods in references increase very fast, even forbidden. On the contrary, since the FLC is used to deal with feeder capacitor control, the time expenditure would increase slightly. This is a great superiority to other methods. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the research award foundation for middle age and young excellent scientists in Shandong province, China for nancial support under contract number 97235515. References

Fig. 3. Voltage of bus 13 in a day.

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