Article’s

One of the most important problems in the contemporary electrical power distribution systems is voltage regulation. The variations in nominal levels of voltage lead to degraded power quality, higher system losses, faster equipment wear, and possible instability cascades. The present paper is a detailed study of the use of capacitor banks as one of the primary tools of reactive power compensation and improvement of voltage profile in radial distribution networks. The paper systematically looks into the theoretical foundations, mathematical modelling, operational properties, and application implementation solutions of fixed, switched, and automatic capacitor banks. The IEEE 33-bus radial distribution system is used as a reference benchmark and three operating scenarios are analyzed using the load-flow simulation: a base configuration with no compensation, a uniformly compensated configuration with capacitor banks installed at uniform spacing, and an optimally placed configuration derived using sensitivity analysis. As shown in the results of the simulation, the optimal positioning of the capacitor banks will lead to a reduction in the total real power loss by approximately 29.8 per cent, increase in the minimum bus voltage per unit (p.u.) to 0.9680 p.u., and the power factor of the system increasing to 0.96. The results affirm that capacitor banks located in strategic locations are still one of the most affordable and technically feasible ways of regulating the voltage in modern distribution networks.