Expert system application for voltage control and VAR compensation

This paper introduces a new approach for voltage control and reactive power (VAR) compensation in electric power systems using steady state network equivalents and expert system techniques. This approach can be applied in planning and operation studies. A steady state network equivalencing technique is implemented to construct the 'three tier' subsystem which is adequate for solving voltage violation problems. An expert system utilises the sensitivity tree method to select the optimal set of control actions to alleviate the voltage violation problem. The expert system was developed using the VP-EXPERT system shell. VP-EXPERT interacts with a power system analysis software providing analysis of the network sensitivity matrix and data for the knowledge base. Results are demonstrated on the modified IEEE 30-bus test system.