Reactive power planning with uncertainties in load/generation specifications

Reactive power planning is an important problem in power systems. It determines the optimal location and size of reactive power resources such that the overall cost of expansion plan is lesser and the system is secure. Uncertainties are always present in any data. These uncertainties are even more pronounced in power system due to its geographical spread, size and complexity. Most of the literature deals with reactive power planning considering certainty in data. This paper presents an approach for reactive power planning considering uncertainties in load/generation specifications. Results for two sample test systems have been obtained to demonstrate the importance of the problem.