On the Need for Communication for Voltage Regulation of Power Distribution Grids

We consider the problem of regulating the voltage profile of a power distribution grid by controlling the reactive power injection of distributed microgenerators. We define a very general class of purely local feedback controllers in which reactive power injection is adjusted based on the local volt...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on control of network systems 2019-09, Vol.6 (3), p.1111-1123
Main Authors: Bolognani, Saverio, Carli, Ruggero, Cavraro, Guido, Zampieri, Sandro
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Control
Control systems
Decentralized control
Electric power distribution
Electrical measurement
Feedback control
Mathematical model
networked control systems
optimization
Power distribution
Power measurement
Reactive power
Reactive power control
Voltage control
Voltage measurement
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We consider the problem of regulating the voltage profile of a power distribution grid by controlling the reactive power injection of distributed microgenerators. We define a very general class of purely local feedback controllers in which reactive power injection is adjusted based on the local voltage measurements. This class includes most of the solutions proposed in the literature and in the latest grid codes. We show that these strategies do not guarantee the desired regulation, as each of them can have an equilibrium that is not feasible with respect to the desired voltage and power constraints. We then propose a networked feedback law to show that, by adding short-range communication between microgenerators, it is possible to design control strategies that provably converge to the feasible set. This fundamental performance gap between local and networked strategies is finally illustrated via simulations.
ISSN:2325-5870
2372-2533
DOI:10.1109/TCNS.2019.2921268