Power system reactive power planning has long been an important issue for the power industry. The widely used VAr compensation device is a SVC with its controller. The problem of planning falls into determination of optimal locations and settings of SVC devices in the power system to be compensated. We propose a new approach of reactive planning using SVCs and nonlinear SVC controllers. This approach considers not only system buses but also the transmission lines to achieve more comprehensive compensation and better system performance especially in view of voltage stability enhancement and control.