SHUNT CAPACITOR EFFECT ON ELECTRICAL DISTRIBUTION-SYSTEM RELIABILITY

To improve the security & reliability of a distribution system, as muc h power as feasible must go through a given transmission line. This ca n be achieved by using shunt capacitors as compensators. These shunt c apacitive compensators improve the load carrying capability of the lin e by controlling the reactive power flow. Consequently, the capacitor existence can not be ignored in evaluating system reliability. The pap er applies the state-space method to calculate the reliability indices for compensated & uncompensated systems with different success criter ia. The importance of using shunt capacitors to improve the level of d istribution system reliability is illustrated in addition to their ori ginal function as reactive power controllers. Our procedure, based on a Markov process, is applied to a numerical example, and indicates tha t system reliability is improved when using shunt capacitors.