Coordination of reactive power scheduling in a multi-area power system operated by independent utilities

This thesis addresses the problem of reactive power scheduling in a power system with several areas controlled by independent transmission system operators (TSOs). To design a fair method for optimizing the control settings in the interconnected multi-TSO system, two types of schemes are developed.First, a centralized multi-TSO optimization scheme is introduced, and it is shown that this scheme has some properties of fairness in the economic sense.Second, the problem is addressed through a decentralized optimization scheme with no information exchange between the TSOs. In this framework, each TSO assumes an external network equivalent in place of its neighboring TSOs and optimizes the objective function corresponding to its own control area regardless of the impact that its choice may have on the other TSOs.The thesis presents simulation results obtained with the IEEE 39 bus system and IEEE 118 bus systems partitioned between three TSOs. It also presents some results for a UCTE-like 4141 bus system with seven TSOs. The decentralized control scheme is applied to both time-invariant and time-varying power systems. Nearly optimal performance is obtained in those contexts