Distributed cooperation for voltage regulation in future distribution networks

As the penetration of distributed energy resources (DERs) increases significantly in the distribution networks, their integration reshapes distribution system power flows and leads to serious voltage quality problems in distribution networks. In this paper, a novel distributed cooperation voltage regulation method is proposed for future distribution networks. The proposed method can minimize the number of agents involved in the voltage regulation and it minimizes the change of required power for voltage regulation, which together minimizes the need for re-dispatching, i.e. the impact of voltage regulation on exchange of energy. Moreover, the proposed method performs online optimization, i.e the value of the decision variable is physically implemented as a controller set-point at each iteration which reduces the response time. The presented algorithm is benchmarked against ADMM and centralized optimization. The results show the voltage regulation effectiveness. Compared to the centralized method, the proposed method performs better in the case of a single agent failure, and compared to the ADMM method, the proposed method greatly reduces the action time and does not require retuning if network topology or agent participation changes.