Practical reactive power allocation/operation planning using successive linear programming

A method for reactive power planning is presented that it finds an optimal solution for both allocation and operation planning in large systems using linear programming (LP). The method utilizes calculated linear sensitivities including active power and voltage phase angle in the formulation. Although the overall method includes these relations, the number of constraints and variables are not augmented in its first procedure, APPROACH-1. Its second procedure, APPROACH-2, overcomes numerical problems caused by a dense constraint matrix. This is achieved by retaining untouched sparse sensitivities in the constraint matrix and by eliminating any calculations related to the inverse matrix. The results of applying this method to a practical 224-bus system and the IEEE-30 bus system verify its robustness and fast convergence