Coordinated reactive power management in distribution networks with renewable energy resources

Due to increasing penetration level of renewable energy based Distributed Generation (DG), voltage/reactive power control in distribution networks is currently an important topic. This paper proposes two coordinated voltage/reactive power control approaches in active distribution grids. The proposed coordination control is achieved based on predefined procedures to increase speed response and to reduce the complexity of computations. Simulations were carried out on a realistic Medium Voltage (MV) network using measured data of DG output power. The results were taken for different three weeks in the year representing different seasons. The results of the proposed approach were compared with previously published centralized control approach. The results indicate that the proposed approaches reduce the number of OLTC operations, reduce system losses, minimize the voltage fluctuation in the distribution system, and increase the hosting capacity of DG power.