Voltage control in LV networks: An initial investigation

The installation of small-scale photovoltaic (PV) systems in European low voltage (LV) networks is continuously increasing given the attractive incentives adopted by countries such as the UK and Germany. In many cases, these installations are clustered in the same feeder or LV network, potentially resulting in voltage rise issues. To address this in a flexible way, here it is proposed the real-time intelligent control of LV on-load tap changer (OLTC)-fitted transformers to regulate voltages at the LV feeders. The performance of the proposed control logic is investigated adopting remote voltage monitoring of the end points as well as estimated values. The proposed control logic is applied to a real UK LV network considering one-minute simulations for a day. The results of both the monitoring and estimation-based approaches are compared for different PV penetrations. The control logic with remote monitoring successfully kept voltages of customers within the EN50160 standard. A strong performance was also shown when using estimated values. This highlights the potential applicability of such an approach.