OPTIMAL VAR PRICING AND VAR PLACEMENT USING ANALYTIC HIERARCHICAL PROCESS

This paper proposes a new method to study reactive power pricing and n ew VAr source selection using the analytic hierarchical process (AHP), and presents a price structure for providing reactive power service a nd control based on the OFF approach. The cost of reactive power suppo rt service is determined based on capability and contribution to impro vement of system performance such as security, reliability and economi cs, by calculating sensitivity of objective function with respect to r eactive power support. For VAr planning purpose, an analytic hierarchi cal process model is devised which comprehensively considers the netwo rk topology and all types of benefits including operating cost, system voltage and loss for each candidate VAr source site. The proposed app roach for calculating VAr pricing and selecting the new VAr sources wa s tested on an IEEE 30-bus system. The calculation results are analyze d by the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) method. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.