Reactive Power Provision from Distributed Energy Resources in Market Environment

Conventionally, generators with a considerable generation capacity have been responsible for providing ancillary services, e.g. reactive power support and spinning reserve. However, with recent highly penetrated distributed energy resources (DERs) systems and considering the benefit that DERs can bring to the system, it seems reasonable to optimally utilize them as a distributed reactive power service provider. Therefore, this paper proposes a settlement for DERs which participate in the reactive power market. To do so, an algorithm is proposed which determines the maximum DERs reactive power transmission capability from distribution networks into transmission systems. Also, a reactive power procurement model is proposed here to consider DERs participation in the reactive market. To justify the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method, the 33-bus distribution and CIGRE 32-bus test systems are utilized.