A heuristic model for reactive power planning on electric energy systems

An approach for solving reactive power planning problems is presented, which is based on binary search techniques and the use of a special heuristic to obtain a discrete solution. Two versions were developed, one run on conventional (sequential) computers and the other to run on a distributed memory machine. This latter parallel processing version employs an asynchronous programming model. Once the set of candidate sites has been defined, the program gives the location and size of the reactive sources needed (if any) in keeping with operating and security constraints.