Impact of Capacitor Banks on Voltage Profile and Power Losses in Medium Voltage Power Systems

This paper studies the impact of capacitor banks on voltage profile and power losses in medium voltage power systems. Corresponding to compensative levels, some case studies are considered to evaluate the effect of capacitors to power systems such as no capacitor bank, a capacitor bank at a bus and some capacitor banks in whole system. A simple power system is consider to analyze values of bus voltage, power losses and power flows. The Newton-Raphson method is also made more detailed in case studies of having the participation of capacitor banks at any bus in complex systems. ETAP software is used to simulate and determine all parameters and evaluate the meaning of capacitor banks. Carried out by ETAP, voltage quality and power losses can be improved very much corresponding to the high value for capacitor banks at some buses. To have higher quality for values of bus voltage and smaller power losses, capacitor banks must be combined with other distributed power sources.