Provision for reactive power market in the reactive power control groups

Implementation of electricity market is facing many challenges in developing countries like India. The market for real power is gaining more interest of investors while the market for reactive power has less incentive due to its technical limitation. But reactive power is of importance for system security and improving the line transmission capacity. The system operator is therefore willing to buy reactive power from different sources to ensure the necessary potential at each node of the system. The paper discusses an approach for market for reactive power in reactive power control groups using the concept of electrical distances. The approach does not involve any optimal power flow (OPF) algorithm for avoiding the complexity and non-convergence for large systems but discusses a simple and economical market provision for reactive power. The approach is illustrated with the transmission system of Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited (UPPCL).