Data-center power lines are nearing their thermal and operational limits, creating a need for higher transfer capability, lower voltage regulation, and improved transmission efficiency. Although series capacitor compensation is a well-established transmission technique, its application to large data-center interconnections requires a clearer understanding of how compensation level affects controllable power delivery under practical voltage regulation requirements. This paper develops analytical transmission-line models without and with series compensation and applies them to the grid-to-data-center transmission interface. The study quantifies how series compensation affects voltage regulation, reactive power requirement, transferable power, and transmission efficiency under two operating regimes: an unconstrained receiving-end voltage case and a constrained terminal-voltage case. The results show that, when the receiving-end voltage is not strictly regulated, increasing the degree of series compensation significantly reduces voltage regulation and reactive power demand while enhancing power transfer capability. However, when the sending-end and receiving-end voltages are constrained to remain at or near nominal values, the maximum transferable power increases only up to an optimal compensation level, beyond which it declines as compensation approaches 100%. The analysis further shows that coordinated regulation of voltage magnitude and angle becomes necessary at high compensation levels to maintain controllable and efficient power transfer. Overall, the paper provides a data-center-oriented framework for identifying when series compensation improves power delivery and when additional transmission control becomes necessary.
Karmakar et al. (Sat,) studied this question.