Real-time VAR control using ANN with web-based power monitoring

This paper aimed to introduce a real-time reactive power controller based on artificial neural network. A feed-forward employing back-propagation was used as training algorithm. The inputs to the ANN were real and reactive power of each load, and the targets were to switch ON/OFF the capacitors during normal and abnormal conditions. The network was trained using Matlab and the weights corresponded to minimum (MSE) error were fed to the microcontroller unit. This method was tested in a radial distribution system model and implemented using Zilog Microcontroller. The results were monitored using web-based power monitoring. The method was validated and results were satisfactorily obtained.