Fuzzy Control for Shunt Capacitors Applied in Distribution Feeders

The lack of reactive energy flow control in distribution networks causes an increase of electrical losses and problems with the voltage profile. The main objective of this work is to develop a fuzzy control system for automatic capacitor banks applied to distribution feeders, which was focused on the improvement of the equipment performance allowing a better correction of the system reactive and minimizing the switching number of the capacitor banks and not causing the floating of voltage levels at the feeders. It was analyzed the controller ́s performance on a 70 buses system. The main results shown that the fuzzy controller is not affected neither by the capacitor bank installation position at the distribution feeder nor by the bank capacity in kvar. Another aspect is that the fuzzy controller does not need to be tuned in the case of changes at the system’s load profiles, always operating with good results for several different load profiles. Key-Words: Fuzzy control, distribution feeders, shunt capacitors.