Simple voltage regulation method for smart grid applications

The complexity of power systems and the change of demand load at the consumer make it necessary to control the voltage to avoid any unnecessary voltage drop beyond the limits allowed within the international standards and achieve optimum energy efficiency. This paper introduces a simple method that can regulate the voltage of a system without the sophisticated electronic devices. The method that controls the minimum voltage at one of the buses in a system has been studied on IEEE 13-node test feeder. This method has been proposed to control the voltage using more-than-a-step tap where the algorithm can decide what tap to choose based on the set features. The method has been simulated with three different scenarios - with loads connected at all buses, with one of the loads disconnected from a certain bus, and with a distributed generation (DG) connected to a certain bus. The results show effective over and under voltage controls and a considerable enhancement in energy efficiency.