Automatic schemes for including generator Q and transformer tap limits in the fast decoupled load flow method

This study proposes a modified formulation for the popular fast decoupled load flow method to facilitate automatic incorporation of reactive power flow related constraints, i.e. generator reactive power and in‐phase transformer tap limits. This formulation has been developed by viewing each device constraint as a set of complementary conditions and adopting the complementarity framework to define one equation to represent this set. The original set of load flow equations is augmented with this set of new equations representing the device constraints and solved to get the adjusted solutions directly. This approach is a significant departure from all the earlier approaches. The earlier approaches generally adopt a two‐stage scheme. In the first stage, an approximate unadjusted solution is obtained and in the next stage, adjustments are attempted by ad hoc schemes. The new formulation presented here permits handling both the reactive power related constraints simultaneously. However, it can also be used in situations where only one type of adjustment is needed. Two alternate algorithms in complementarity framework based on mixed complementarity problem and non‐linear complementarity problem formulations are presented here. Simulation results are presented to provide evidence of the impressive performance of the new algorithms as compared with the existing ones.