Candidate
Adarsh Madhavan
Title
A Smart Voltage Optimization Framework For Industrial Loads
Supervisors
Canizares, Claudio A. and Bhattacharya, Kankar
Abstract
Voltage Varying (VV) methods like Conservation Voltage Reduction (CVR) are widely and successfully used by electric power distributors to reduce overall energy consumption and peak power demand of feeders. However it is not a common practice among industrial power customers. This work explores the possibility of developing a VV strategy for power customers that takes into account the complex nature of an industrial load and its unique set of constraints.
A generic and comprehensive Voltage Optimization (VO) model that can be used by power customers, plant operators or CVR equipment vendors to improve energy savings is presented. The proposed VO framework incorporates Neural Network (NN) modelling of an industrial load considering various operating constraints. The system operation objective is based on the minimization of the energy drawn from the substation by adjusting the plant voltage. This is done while accounting for the cost of switching operations of plant tap changers, and also maintaining the switching operations within plant operator specified values.
The developed VO model is tested on simulated and real load data. Results suggest that this technique can be implemented by power customers or plant operators to improve energy savings in comparison to CVR.