A Distributed Control Strategy for Reactive Power Compensation in Smart Microgrids

By Saverio Bolognani, Sandro Zampieri. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, 2011

303 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We consider the problem of optimal reactive power compensation for the minimization of power distribution losses in a smart microgrid. We first propose an approximate model for the power distribution network, which allows us to cast the problem into the class of convex quadratic, linearly constrained, optimization problems. We then consider the specific problem of commanding the microgenerators connected to a microgrid, in order to achieve the optimal injection of reactive power. For this task, we design a randomized, leader-less, gossip-like optimization algorithm. We show how a distributed approach is possible, where microgenerators need to have only a partial knowledge of the problem parameters and of the state, and can perform only local measurements. For the proposed algorithm, we provide conditions for convergence together with an analytic characterization of the convergence speed. The analysis shows that, in radial networks, the best performance is achieved when we command cooperation among microgenerators that are neighbors in the electric topology. Numerical simulations are included to validate both the proposed model and the analytic results about the performance of the proposed algorithm.

Subfields: Control and Systems Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5bbc12504a8f512265b321d1b1c7dcb7add71b0a

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Citations in the corpus

Distributed Optimal Power Flow for Smart Microgrids (2012, background): “To this end, optimal pow er flow (OPF) approaches are increasingly advocated also in thi s context to ensure efficient operation of smart microgrids an d effect strict voltage regulation [3], [5], [6], [7].”
Cluster synchronization in nonlinear complex networks under sliding mode control (2016, background): “Over the past few decades, complex network systems have attracted a great deal of attention from different fields of scientific research such as the Internet networks, electricity distribution networks, and biological networks [1–3].”
Voltage Stability and Reactive Power Sharing in Inverter-Based Microgrids With Consensus-Based Distributed Voltage Control (2016, background): “In [24] and [25], distributed control schemes for the problem of optimal reactive power compensation are presented.”
Online optimization in closed loop on the power flow manifold (2017, background): “The properties of the algorithms in [2]–[4] are difficult to analyze if implemented in a feedback loop with the nonlinear system, since their design is not directly based on the PFM, and therefore the vector fields they induce on the PFM are somewhat contrived.”
On the Existence and Linear Approximation of the Power Flow Solution in Power Distribution Networks (2014, methodology): “The approximate power flow solution proposed in this paper has been presented in a preliminary form in [6], [30], where however no guarantees on the existence of such solution and on the quality of the approximation were given.”
Synchronization and power sharing for droop-controlled inverters in islanded microgrids (2012, unknown): “See [26,27] for a broad overview, and [35,29,4,32] for various works.”
Synchronization in complex networks and its application - A survey of recent advances and challenges (2014, background): “(vi) Power grids are becoming more distributed, intelligent, and flexible (Bolognani & Zampieri, 2013; Guerrero et al., 2011).”
A Survey of Distributed Optimization and Control Algorithms for Electric Power Systems (2017, background): “In [192], an optimal reactive power flow problem is formulated for a linearized power flow model that gives rise to a linearly-constrained quadratic program whose optimizer can be computed in a distributed fashion.”
Distributed and Decentralized Voltage Control of Smart Distribution Networks: Models, Methods, and Future Research (2017, methodology): “This approach has been also applied in [10], [47], and [48] (that also utilize feedback strategies), as well as in [32] and [33].”