Impact of DSTATCOM penetration level on technical benefits in radial distribution network

This paper investigates the impact of DSTATCOM on the losses, voltage stability, and voltage deviation of the radial distribution networks (RDNs) at different DSTATCOM penetration levels (DPLs). A novel voltage stability improvement index (VSII) is modeled to assign an index value to represent the proximity of the voltage stability index (VSI) of all the network buses to the ideal value. The VSII allows a fair comparison of the VSI profile obtained for different events of DSTATCOM penetration levels. Due to the numerous buses of the RDN, the new voltage stability index (NVSI) selects the most sensitive buses to reactive compensation for DSTATCOM integration after performing the load flow for the base case before integration of DSTATCOM. The DSTATCOM is placed on the selected bus, turn by turn, and DPL increases from zero to the maximum reactive load of the RDN in the step of 1 %. This methodology was implemented on the standard 33–bus and Nigerian Imalefalafia 32–bus RDNs. The outcome establishes that a DPL of 30–55 % and 70–100 % were attained for standard 33–bus and Imalefalafia 32–bus RDNs respectively without increasing the power loss. The VSII was continually improved, and average voltage deviation index (AVDI) was reduced with increasing DPL.