Bisection Method for Fairness-Aware Distributed PV Curtailment in Power Distribution Systems

The expedited integration of the distributed energy resources, such as solar photovoltaics, will cause overvoltage issues stemming from the reverse power flow from the leaf nodes to the upstream nodes in the distribution feeder. Although active power curtailment employing droop-based and optimization-based control mechanisms might alleviate the overvoltage problems, such strategies penalize resources in remote areas of radial feeders. Moreover, in the case of distributed energy coordination for modern distribution systems, generalized Lagrangian-based distributed algorithms can perform poorly, leading to infeasible solutions or extensive time delays. In this paper, we propose a bisection method for photovoltaic curtailment that incorporates fairness and resolves overvoltage issues with simplified computational requirements. A proportional burden-sharing for fair distribution of photovoltaic curtailment is studied where distributed agents coordinate among themselves to ensure feasibility and fairness. We demonstrate the efficiency and performance of the proposed algorithm using a modified 3-phase, unbalanced IEEE 123-bus system populated with solar photovoltaics at the load buses and decomposed into five areas.