A Partitioning Method for Distributed Capacitor Control of Electric Power Distribution Systems

In order to implement distributed control of an electric power distribution system, typically a feeder is first partitioned into control areas. In this work, an analytical partitioning method based on capacitor reactive power domains is presented. Once partitioned, a distributed control algorithm is employed to support distribution operation applications with a focus on voltage spread reduction. The partitioning method is also applied to the commonly studied capacitor control objective of loss minimization. Simulation results applying the method to a real-world distribution feeder are presented and compared with an alternate geographically-based partitioning method. Results show the analytical partitioning and distributed control methodology is capable of producing high quality solutions to the capacitor control problem.