Real-Time Conservation Voltage Reduction and Control in Smart Micro-Grid Application

Abstract

This paper studied the demand side management in smart micro-grid operation via conservation voltage reduction (CVR) application. A smart volt/VAR control approach has been introduced to enable the CVR operation. An event-driven realtime control approach has been proposed to check the effectiveness of CVR deployment. The impact of the community energy system (CES) in micro-grid operation and control has been studied by developing an adaptive volt/VAR droop control strategy for micro-grid CES (μCES) controllers. An accurate voltage sensitive load model has been utilized. The simulations have been carried out using a real-time digital simulator (RTDS) for three cases: normal operation, CVR operation, and cloud transient impact under CVR. Voltage fluctuation control under cloud transient has been further studied without controller, with conventional controller and in the presence of μCES controllers. The real-time simulation results validate the proposed control scheme, and results also reveal that CVR could reduce considerable peak power demand in micro-grid operation. Further, the μCES controller scheme handles voltage control smartly in comparison to conventional droop control.