Coordinated active and reactive power control for overvoltage mitigation in physical LV microgrids

Abstract

The share of photovoltaic (PV) systems in the distribution networks is rapidly growing, leading to the common issue of overvoltage at the end of distribution feeders during the periods when peak generation is surplus to consumption. In this study, a hierarchical control is proposed to mitigate overvoltage at the point of connection of PV systems in physical low-voltage microgrids. The proposed mechanism is comprised of primary and secondary control layers to tackle the overvoltage problems given the communication capability is available. This mechanism employs a multi-objective optimisation approach to effectively coordinate curtailed active power and absorbed reactive power of the PV inverters with the aim of minimising the active power curtailment. The feasibility of the proposed control approach is successfully verified through simulations on a simplified LV network.

Keywords

• power generation control
• distributed power generation
• photovoltaic power systems
• invertors
• overvoltage protection
• optimisation
• reactive power control
• hierarchical systems
• optimal control
• multiobjective optimisation approach
• pv inverters
• active power curtailment
• overvoltage mitigation
• physical lv microgrids
• photovoltaic systems
• distribution networks
• distribution feeders
• hierarchical control
• pv systems
• low-voltage microgrids
• primary control layers
• secondary control layers
• coordinated reactive power control
• lv network