Reactive power compensation of Saudi electricity-western operation area using dynamic programming and genetic algorithm

Abstract

This paper presents a study of the 380-kV network of Saudi Electricity Company in the Western Operation Area (SEC-WOA). Where, the effect of using series, shunt, and mixed capacitors for reactive power compensation on the network is investigated. Three different load levels namely light, medium, and peak have been considered in the investigation. Power world simulator (PWS) is used to perform the network load flow analysis, the obtained results were identical to the real load flow in the company documents. PWS based Dynamic Programming is used to determine the size and optimal location of the capacitor used in each scheme used for reactive power compensation for the network and compared to the optimum solutions obtained by both the Genetic Algorithm (GA) and the Hybrid Genetic Algorithm (HGA). The comparison reveals better solutions of the proposed method compared with GA and HGA.