Distributed Coordinated Reactive Power Control for Voltage Regulation in Distribution Networks

In this article, a novel distributed coordinated control framework is proposed to handle the uncertain voltage violations in active distribution networks. It addresses the problem of coordination of different types of devices in a distributed manner. In our control design, on-load tap changers (OLTCs) are firstly employed to handle the potential voltage violations based on the prediction of renewable outputs and load variations. During real-time operation, once an unmanageable voltage violation is detected, the reactive power of distributed energy resources (DERs) will be coordinated immediately to provide fast corrective control. The control schedules of OLTCs are calculated by solving a multitime-step constrained optimization problem via the alternating direction method of multipliers, whereas the reactive power injections of DERs are determined by a novel online distributed algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed control framework is verified on the modified IEEE 34-bus and 123-bus test feeders.