Reactive Power Management in Distributed Generation

Distributed Generation offers environmental and economic benefits over centralized generation. Renewable energy sources are inherently distributed in nature and the most important source to meet the future energy demands. Most generators in distributed generation are asynchronous and are affected by the problem of reactive power. They cannot produce reactive power but actually draws it from the power system. It can cause voltage drop which is not acceptable for the customers due to narrow operating range of voltages for appliances. This problem can be overcome by using reactive power management techniques. Power factor control is most commonly used technique for reactive power compensation. Many such devices used for reactive power management are explained in this paper. Moreover, one of the many advantages of FACTS devices, i.e., voltage regulation is simulated in MATLAB.