Method for green field security-constrained allocation of reactive support

The separation of the businesses of generation and transmission has had a significant effect on the requirements for reactive power support in relation to the provision of system security. There is a need to identify the system-related value of reactive power support and voltage regulation services provided by generators and other reactive compensation plant. This leads to the problem of allocating system reactive requirements among the existing plant, in addition to identifying the location, amount and type of new VARs. In turn, this imposes some new challenges for the existing tools for VAR capacity allocation, in terms of modelling, the number of variables and constraints, and the problem's overall complexity. The paper discusses some implementation issues and presents computational experience of the application of the Benders decomposition technique to a ‘green field’ security-constrained allocation of reactive support.