Coordinated Voltage Regulator Control in Systems with High-level Penetration of Distributed Energy Resources

Voltage Control is one of the fundamental operational requirements for power systems, which can become very challenging in presence of distributed energy resources (DERs). This paper presents a novel method for inclusion of voltage regulators (VRs) in a distributed voltage control framework for distribution networks. The goal is to coordinate and optimize the operation of voltage regulators. Of special interest are networks with high penetration of distributed energy resources, PVs in particular, which exhibit overvoltage problems. To that end, we have adopted a dynamic VR model from the literature and applied the proposed coordinated control method on a modified IEEE 123 test system with very high penetration of PVs. Over Voltage Severity Index (OVSI) and Cumulative Voltage Variation Index (CVVI) have been defined and used in the algorithm to control the regulation steps of VRs. The developed method is compared against the base case with no control and the results show its effectiveness in coordinated VR control.