Reducing Transmission Losses via Reactive Power Control

Modern smart grids are required to transport electricity along transmission lines from the renewable energy sources to the customer’s demand in an efficient manner. It is inevitable that power is lost along these lines due to active as well as reactive power flows. However, the losses caused by reactive power flows can be reduced by optimizing the power factor. Therefore, we propose a power flow optimization problem aiming to reduce losses by controlling the power factors within the low-voltage electricity grid online. Furthermore, we show the potential of the proposed scheme in a numerical case study for two scenarios based on real-world data provided by a German distribution system operator.