Abstract: In the low voltage distribution network area,the current reactive compensation evaluation still remains mostly at the level of direct economic benefit and ignores the voltage characteristics.In order to solve this problem,a TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) technique is proposed to evaluate the comprehensive benefit of the reactive compensation scheme from the aspects of both the voltage characteristics and the direct economic benefit.First,a voltage characteristic index is set up from the perspective of the voltage charac- teristics along the line,and a direct economic benefit index is also set up.Next,the evaluation indexes are prepro- cessed according to their attributes,and the weight of each evaluation index is determined by means of the rank cor- relation analysis.Then,the positive and negative －ideal solutions of each evaluation index are obtained,and the rel- ative close degrees between the reactive compensation scheme and the ideal solution are calculated by means of the improved close degree method,thus achieving the good or bad order of the comprehensive benefit of the reactive com- pensation scheme.Finally,the proposed method is used to evaluate five kinds of reactive power schemes for several actual low voltage distribution network areas,and the result is compared with the result of the good or bad order only based on the direct economic benefit.It is found that the proposed method is both objective and effective.

Key words: power system, reactive compensation, comprehensive benefit evaluation, technique for order prefer- ence by similarity to ideal solution, low voltage distribution network area