Distributed control of reactive power flow in a radial distribution circuit with high photovoltaic penetration
- 1 July 2010
- conference paper
- conference paper
- Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Abstract
We show how distributed control of reactive power can serve to regulate voltage and minimize resistive losses in a distribution circuit that includes a significant level of photovoltaic (PV) generation. To demonstrate the technique, we consider a radial distribution circuit with a single branch consisting of sequentially-arranged residential-scale loads that consume both real and reactive power. In parallel, some loads also have PV generation capability. We postulate that the inverters associated with each PV system are also capable of limited reactive power generation or consumption, and we seek to find the optimal dispatch of each inverter's reactive power to both maintain the voltage within an acceptable range and minimize the resistive losses over the entire circuit. We assume the complex impedance of the distribution circuit links and the instantaneous load and PV generation at each load are known. We compare the results of the optimal dispatch with a suboptimal local scheme that does not require any communication. On our model distribution circuit, we illustrate the feasibility of high levels of PV penetration and a significant (20% or higher) reduction in losses.Keywords
This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit:
- Belief Propagation for Min-cost Network Flow: Convergence & CorrectnessPublished by Society for Industrial & Applied Mathematics (SIAM) ,2010
- Message passing for optimization and control of a power grid: Model of a distribution system with redundancyPhysical Review E, 2009
- Optimal Transmission Switching—Sensitivity Analysis and ExtensionsIEEE Transactions on Power Systems, 2008
- Efficient integer optimization algorithms for optimal coordination of capacitors and regulatorsIEEE Transactions on Power Systems, 1990
- Network reconfiguration in distribution systems for loss reduction and load balancingIEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, 1989
- Optimal sizing of capacitors placed on a radial distribution systemIEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, 1989
- Optimal capacitor placement on radial distribution systemsIEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, 1989