Two-Mode Adaptive Schemes for VAR Control With Solar Power and Energy Storage

Increasing penetration of photovoltaic can cause high voltage variation that needs to be mitigated; this has been the focus of recent studies for many volt-ampere reactive (VAR) control strategies. Though voltage-variation mitigation is very important, it is also important to minimize power loss throughout the distribution when voltage variation is no longer an issue. Therefore, a complete adaptive sequential strategy for VAR control in distribution networks with solar energy is developed in this paper. In this adaptive sequential scheme, a two-way switch is designed to work with two operational modes: 1) voltage-variation minimization mode (V_Mode) aimed to minimize voltage variations along the distribution network and 2) power-loss minimization mode (P_Mode) aimed to minimize power loss. According to the operator needs for different situations, this two-way switch can be used to satisfy either the V_Mode or P_Mode requirements in a control loop fashion. Simulations are conducted with defined parameters in a radial distribution network. By comparing with no control (or baseline) in simulation, we show that the two-way switch works well in balancing the user needs (requirement) for the purpose of minimizing voltage variation and power loss in order to gain higher energy savings over a specified time duration.