A Coordinated Control Architecture With Inverter-Based Resources and Legacy Controllers of Power Distribution System for Voltage Profile Balance

In this article, a coordinated control architecture is proposed that utilizes inverter-based distributed energy resources (DERs) and legacy controllers such as voltage regulators in a power distribution system and coordinates the reactive power support such that the voltage balance at a particular node of interest can be achieved. The approach is developed based on the alternating direction method of multipliers and the optimal control framework, where a primary control loop is used to provide the necessary reactive power set point to mitigate the voltage deviation and a secondary control loop is used to balance the reactive power from multiple devices such as DERs. The methodology is tested on the IEEE 123-bus distribution feeder with multiple three-phase DERs in coordination with a voltage regulator. It has been observed that the proposed architecture can reduce regulator tap operation, improve the voltage deviation (at least by 20%), and, at the same time, mitigate the negative effect of the reverse operation of the regulators.