Increasing Unbalanced Distribution Network’s Hosting Capacity for Distributed Energy Resources by Voltage Regulators

Renewable energy sources (RESs) are becoming promising nowadays. Deploying distributed energy resources (DERs) is thus increasing accordingly, but the intermittent nature associated with RES remains a significant challenge. Also, the distribution grid faces technological difficulties with the large-scale integration of PV generations and EV charging loads. This paper suggests a strategy for a novel optimal voltage regulator (VR) placement model associated with the optimal placement of electric vehicle chargers (EVCs) and photovoltaic (PV) cells. Also, VRs’ reference voltages are determined optimally to enhance the hosting capacity (HC) of three-phase unbalanced distribution feeders for large-scale residential/public EVCs and PVs. Two scenarios are defined to study the impact of VRs on the network’s HC for DERs, namely with and without VRs in the real three-phase unbalanced feeder. The developed model determines the optimal placement of VRs and their reference voltages linked with EVCs and PVs penetration. Time-Varying Acceleration Coefficients Iteration Particle Swarm Optimization (TVAC-IPSO) algorithm has been implemented to improve the real three-phase unbalanced distribution feeder’s HC for DERs. The efficiency of the proposed model and the solution method is validated on the modified IEEE 37-node medium voltage (MV) radial distribution network connected to 35 low voltage (LV) distribution feeders. The obtained results represent that installing a proper number of VRs will increase the network’s HC for DERs.