Optimal Reactive Power Dispatching for Automatic Voltage Control of Hydropower Station Based on an Improved Genetic Algorithm

-This paper presents recent work on the control strategy and algorithm for automatic voltage control (AVC) of hydropower station with multiple units and large capacities. Under the conditions that no dynamic voltage problems are considered, a method intended primarily to control steady state voltage of HV bus by economically regulating the reactive power generation of hydropower station is proposed. An improved Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used for optimal reactive power dispatching in automatic voltage control of hydropower station. Compared with the classic GA, three basic operators in GA which are the sorting selection operator, the pattern crossover operator and the quasi-gradient mutation operator are amended in this paper. Furthermore, the result of GA is modified by mountain-climbing method. The simulating results show that the compatibility of the improved GA is better than normal optimal algorithms and classic GA, and the algorithm can also obtain global optimization and reduce the net-loss to the most extent. The numerical simulations in off-line environment on practical system with 5 units and 13 units demonstrate that the processing speed and the accuracy are completely acceptable in practical project.