Multiobjective reactive power compensation with voltage security

This paper presents a new approach using a variant of the strength Pareto evolutionary algorithm (SPEA) to address reactive power compensation in electric systems as a multiobjective problem, turning most traditional constraints into new objective functions. The method independently optimizes several figures related with the operation of a power system such as, amount of investment in reactive power devices, transmission losses and, as an addition to previous approaches, voltage security is included. At the same time, constrains limit other parameters as reliability and voltage profile. That way, a wide set of optimal solutions, known as Pareto set, is found before deciding which solution best combines different features. A set of compensation schemes elaborated by specialists using traditional engineering tools is compared to a Pareto set found with the proposed approach using appropriate test suite metrics. Comparison results emphasize outstanding advantages of the proposed computational approach, such as: ease of calculation, better-defined Pareto front and a larger number of Pareto solutions.