Distribution system voltage regulation by distributed energy resources

This paper proposes a control method to regulate voltages in 3 phase unbalanced electrical distribution systems. A constrained optimization problem to minimize voltage deviations and maximize distributed energy resource (DER) active power output is solved by harmony search algorithm. IEEE 13 Bus Distribution Test System was modified to test three different cases: a) only voltage regulator controlled system b) only DER controlled system and c) both voltage regulator and DER controlled system. The simulation results show that systems with both voltage regulators and DER control provide better voltage profile.