Asynchronous local voltage control in power distribution networks

Abstract

High penetration of distributed energy resources presents significant challenges and provides emerging opportunities for voltage regulation in power distribution systems. Advanced power-electronics technology makes it possible to control the reactive power output from these resources, in order to maintain a desirable voltage profile. This paper develops a local control framework to account for limits on reactive power resources using the gradient projection optimization method. Requiring only local voltage measurements, the proposed design does not suffer from the stability issues of (de-)centralized approaches caused by communication delays and noises. Our local voltage design is shown to be robust to potential asynchronous control updates among distributed resources in a "plug-and-play" distribution network.