On-line voltage regulation: the case of New England

This paper reports results of a joint industry-university study regarding possible steady-state voltage problems in portions of New England. Circumstances under which these problems may occur are described first; this is followed by a review of the operating and planning practices for preventing their occurrence. These engineering practices are compared with an analytic approach whose application to the same operating problems is presented in this paper. The results represent a verification of the method's potential to serve as a powerful tool for predicting steady-state voltage problems created by contingencies and for determining locations and amounts of available reactive power compensation and generation-based voltage support necessary to bring load voltages close to their pre-contingency values. The method is potentially useful for automating the search for solutions under the operating conditions not previously experienced by a human operator and could be used as a basis for on-line steady-state voltage regulation. This is an important qualitative improvement over the presently practiced open-loop scheduling for preventing steady-state voltage problems.