Reactive power procurement scheme in competitive power markets

To support real power transfers, the system operators of power market must ensure that voltage throughout the network is maintained within acceptable levels under normal and abnormal contingent conditions in order to prevent loss of loads and to keep system reliability. In a competitive power market environment, reactive power is procured as an essential ancillary service. Various methods of procurement of the reactive power supply are outlined in the paper in which the authors envisaged a probabilistic scheme be used to incorporate system risk into the procurement decision. Numerical results on its application to two scenarios illustrate the quantitative approach of the procurement scheme.