Asynchronous distributed voltage control in active distribution networks

Abstract

With the proliferation of distributed energy resources (DERs), voltage regulation in active distribution networks (ADNs) has been facing a great challenge. This paper derives an asynchronous distributed voltage control strategy based on the partial primal–dual gradient algorithm, where both active and reactive power of DERs are considered. Different types of asynchrony due to imperfect communication or other practical limits, such as random time delays and non-identical sampling/computation rates, are fitted into a unified analytic framework. The proposed asynchronous algorithm is then converted into a fixed-point problem by leveraging the operator splitting method, which leads to the convergence proof. Moreover, an online implementation method is introduced to make the controller adjustable to time-varying environments. Finally, numerical experiments are carried out on a rudimentary 8-bus and the IEEE-123 bus system to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.