A Two Ways Communication-Based Distributed Control for Voltage Regulation in Smart Distribution Feeders

Smart grid initiative is based on several pillars among which integrating a wide variety of distributed generation (DG) is of particular importance. The connection of a large number of DG units among loads may result in a severe voltage regulation problem and the utility-side voltage regulators might no longer be able to use conventional control techniques. In addition, smart grid should provide new digital technologies such as monitoring, automatic control, and two way communication facilities to improve the overall performance of the network. These technologies have been applied in this paper to construct a distributed control that has the capability to provide proper voltage regulation in smart distribution feeders. The functions of each controller have been defined according to the concept of intelligent agents and the characteristics of the individual DG unit as well as utility regulators. To verify the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed control structure, a real time simulation model has been proposed. The simulation results show that distributed control structure has the capability to mitigate the interference between DG facilities and utility voltage regulators.