VOLTAGE COLLAPSE MITIGATION BY REACTIVE POWER COMPENSATION AT THE LOAD SIDE

Power system stability may be defined as the property of a power system that enables it to remain in a state of operating equilibrium under normal operating conditions and to regain an acceptable state of equilibrium after being subjected to a disturbance. A general and formal definition is given below. The IEEE/CIGRE Joint Task Force has proposed the following definition-“Power system stability is the ability of an electric power system, for a given initial operating condition, to regain a state of operating equilibrium after being subjected to a physical disturbance, with most system variables bounded, so that practically the entire system remains intact. ” The challenge faced in the modern power system is the collapse of voltages at heavy loads at the load buses of a power system. The voltage collapse will in turn will effect the stability of the power system. In this paper a novel way of mitigating the voltage collapse by supplying the reactive power at load buses is discussed and encouraging simulation results are obtained. The method employed is as fallows. Simulation is done without SVC and STATCOM at load buses. On comparison of the results at the load buses it is seen that with SVC and STATCOM at the load buses voltage collapse is mitigated in spite of heavily loading the system