A distributed control strategy for optimal reactive power flow with power and voltage constraints

We consider the problem of exploiting the microgenerators connected to the power distribution network to provide distributed reactive power compensation for power losses minimization and voltage support. The proposed strategy relies on the fact that all the intelligent agents, located at the microgenerator buses, can measure their voltage, communicate data with other agents on a cyber-layer, and adjust the amount of reactive power injected into the grid according to a feedback control law that descends from duality-based methods applied to the optimal reactive power flow problem. We provide numerical simulations to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm and we discuss its innovative feedback nature.