Smart Inverter Volt-Watt Control Design in High PV-Penetrated Distribution Systems

Advanced control techniques such as volt-watt and volt-VAR control have been developed for high integration of distributed renewable energy, such as photovoltaic (PV) resources, on an electric distribution system. However, designing these control parameters, which yields the best results in the system, is complicated and depends on feeder conditions. This paper proposes a method to properly design the volt-watt control parameters in smart PV inverters to increase the benefit of their control action. The intention of this control design is to mitigate the voltage violations in a high PV-penetrated distribution feeder, while evenly distributing the weight of energy curtailment among all PV systems. Test results are provided from simulation-only scenarios and a hardware-in-the-loop test platform.