A simple method for determination of switched capacitor bank in power distribution systems

This paper proposes an efficient and novel technique for assessment of the direction of switched capacitor bank as well as estimating its distance from the monitoring location in real distribution systems. At first, the proposed method determines the direction of switched capacitor banks based on the slope of the voltage and current space vectors immediately after the capacitor switching instant. Afterward, the exact location of switched capacitor from the monitoring location is determined by estimating the feeder line inductance using first sample magnitude of voltage and current space vector after the switching instant. The discrete wavelet transform (DWT) is also used to detect the exact instant of switching as well as the exact values of voltage and current caused by switching. In this paper, the capabilities of the proposed method are evaluated in various state of switching (normal, Back-To-Back), presence of stochastic nonlinear load and different sampling rate. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is demonstrated with system data obtained from IEEE-13 bus feeders modelled in PSCAD/EMTDC. Simulation results demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of the proposed method considering accepTable error in locating the switched capacitor bank in distribution systems.