Integrating Responsive Electric Bus Chargers into Volt/Var Regulation of Power Systems

The controllable reactive power compensation resources in the power system are facing problems such as insufficient quantity, relatively slow speed, as well as discontinuous regulation characteristics, leading to increasing network power loss and over-limit voltages. There is an urgent need to explore economic and fast reactive power response resources. Electric bus (EB) charging is regular and controllable, and the EB charger (EBC) has a reactive power regulation capability that gives it the ability to serve as an economical and reliable volt/var support for power system. This paper explores the reactive power regulation potential of EBC and applies it to the power system automatic voltage control (AVC). Firstly, the reactive power regulation capability of EBCs is quantitatively evaluated based on the converter operating characteristics and aggregated as a voltage reactive power regulation resource for the transmission system. Then, the reactive power regulation capability of EBCs is integrated into AVC and a multi-objective volt/var optimization model based on OPF considering aggregated responsive EBCs is established. Ultimately, the numerical experiment utilizing a modified IEEE 30-bus test system are performed to confirm the practicality of the proposed method.