Abstract
With the increasing penetration of distributed generators, various operational problems, especially severe voltage violation, threaten the secure operation of active distribution networks. To effectively cope with the voltage fluctuations, novel controllable power electronic equipment represented by soft open points has been used in active distribution networks. Meanwhile, the communication has dramatically increased due to the rise of the variety and number of devices within the network. This paper proposes a decentralized voltage control method of soft open points based on voltage-to-power sensitivity. The method reduces the burden of communication, storage, and calculation effectively in a decentralized manner and fulfills the rapid requirements of large-scale active distribution networks. First, the network is divided into several sub-areas; each is under the control of one soft open point at most. The initial strategies of soft open points are adjusted by local voltage-to-power sensitivity and the voltage information within the sub-areas. If some nodal voltages still exceed the expected range after the sub-area autonomy, the operation strategies of soft open points are further improved by inter-area coordination with the alternating direction method of multipliers algorithm. The effectiveness of the proposed decentralized control method is verified on the IEEE 33-node system.
Highlights
The growing penetration of distributed generators (DGs), such as wind turbines (WTs) and photovoltaics (PVs), brings a series of operational problems to active distribution networks (ADNs), especially severe voltage violation [1,2]
Novel power electronic equipment represented by soft open points (SOPs) can effectively cope with the problems through accurate active and reactive power flow controls
Decentralized control is well-known for its excellent scalability, high robustness, low bandwidth communication, and efficient computation [10,11]. It decomposes the optimization problem into smaller sub-problems by partitioning the system into several sub-areas, each of which is under the control of a local controller
Summary
The growing penetration of distributed generators (DGs), such as wind turbines (WTs) and photovoltaics (PVs), brings a series of operational problems to active distribution networks (ADNs), especially severe voltage violation [1,2]. Novel power electronic equipment represented by soft open points (SOPs) can effectively cope with the problems through accurate active and reactive power flow controls. SOPs are usually installed to replace a normally open point (NOP) for a flexible connection between feeders in ADNs. Compared to conventional regulation devices, such as shunt capacitors, on-load tap changers (OLTCs) and static var compensator (SVCs), SOPs can conduct a fast and precise active and reactive power flow adjustment. It is of great significance to integrate SOPs in ADNs to realize a rapid and flexible operation control [3,4,5,6]. With the remarkable rise in the number and variety of devices in ADNs, the amount of data required for centralized control has dramatically increased, which causes a Electronics 2020, 9, 295; doi:10.3390/electronics9020295 www.mdpi.com/journal/electronics
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