Application of a Data Communication Infrastructure for the Voltage Magnitude Control in Transmission Power Systems

The problem of voltage magnitude control, based on dispatching reactive power, consists in defining the adjustments that must be applied to synchronous generators to bring the voltages of the load buses whose magnitudes are violated within a suitable value range. The utilities usually determine the sequence of adjustments and sent to the selected control device to correct voltage magnitude violations, which makes the use of data communication technologies a necessity to enable this operation. In this context, this work proposes an application of a communication infrastructure for the control of voltage magnitude in transmission power systems. The adjustments in the voltage magnitude of control devices and the sequence of their execution are determined in the Control Manager utilizing two linear sensitivity-based methodologies and, then, transmitted via a WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) network to Control Nodes, which in turn are connected to synchronous generators or condensers. NS-3 (Network Simulator 3) is used to simulate the 118-bus IEEE transmission test system with voltage magnitude violations. The results display an operating scenario that presents voltage violation and the applied communication infrastructure ensures that the sequence of adjustments are forwarded to the control points in order to bring the system state to the appropriate voltage magnitude ranges. The communication infrastructure WiMAX simulated in the NS-3 ensures that the sequence of adjustments are forwarded to the control points in appropriate delay and demonstrates the applicability of WiMAX technology for the control voltage magnitude. At last, to validate the proposed approach, in this paper we present the voltage magnitude in generators and load buses, as well as the availability, the delay and the volume of data transmitted by the WiMAX network as the adjustments in control variables, are executed.