Adaptable Volt-VAR control digital twinning for smart solar inverters

Abstract

The high-level goal of this research work is to enhance solar integration into power distribution grids with a lower cost and less complexity. High penetration levels of solar can lead to power quality issues at the point of interconnection such as flicker and voltage violation. This paper presents a novel Delta-Q approach that determines the most appropriate amount of reactive power support independent of the time step. The proposed scheme is embodied in the solar smart inverters’ Volt-VAR control. It concurrently mitigates voltage violation and smoothens the voltage profile in areas where the solar irradiance is highly intermittent. The performance of the proposed control scheme is evaluated on the Typhoon HIL digital twining testbed along with the dSPACE MicroLabBox rapid control prototype unit. The real-time analysis shows the effectiveness of the proposed technique in lowering voltage violations and also mitigating voltage fluctuations.