An Effective Voltage Control Approach for Distribution Systems with High Penetration of Renewable Energy Resources

Voltage control becomes a crucial challenge as the penetration of renewable energy sources (RESs) increases in distribution systems. The intermittent and variable nature of RESs like solar and wind power can lead to several voltage problems, which can have detrimental effects on the stability and reliability of the distribution networks. This paper introduces a promising cooperative voltage control (CVC) technique for distribution systems with renewable-based distributed generations (DGs). The objectives of the CVC technique are regulating the voltages within the standard limits, maximizing the DGs’ power generation, and decreasing the number of control operations of the voltage control devices in the distribution systems. The proposed CVC consists of two control stages; the DG prosumers perform the first control stage, whereas the step voltage regulators manage the second stage. This paper describes only the first stage, the DG prosumers control stage, using a proposed target nodal voltage control (TNVC) approach. The TNVC approach aims to maximize the DG’s powers and mitigate the overvoltage problem using the optimized nodal voltage as a control signal. Our approach includes a unique feature that effectively reduces control performance degradation caused by infrequent data exchange among agents. The simulation results confirm the control performance of the proposed TNVC approach in achieving the desired objectives.