COMBINED ACTIVE AND REACTIVE DISPATCH WITH MULTIPLE OBJECTIVES USING AN ANALYTIC HIERARCHICAL PROCESS

A fully coupled active and reactive dispatch using linear programming and an analytic hierarchical process is developed. The purpose of comb ined active and reactive dispatch (CARD) is to achieve the overall obj ective of minimum generation cost and to improve the distribution of r eactive power and voltage, subject to constraints which ensure system security. Security is defined as the maintenance of individual circuit flows, generator reactive power output and system voltages within lim its under normal system conditions and contingency cases. The weightin g factors of different kinds of objective functions are determined by an analytic hierarchical process (AHP), considering the relative impor tance of these objective functions. The developed method is demonstrat ed through its application to determine the combined active and reacti ve dispatch of a 713-node network representing a practical power syste m, provided by the National Grid Company plc (NGC). The calculation re sults show that a good balance can be achieved among the various objec tives and a satisfactory generation pattern is obtained from the enhan ced CARD program.