A robust and resilient voltage control strategy for smart grids using distributed measurements

The significant increase of renewable energy sources (RES) into the distribution grids has caused the system operators to expeditiously plan for countermeasures due to the multitude of problems that come along. Distribution level voltage regulation is one such issue. While traditionally distribution level voltage control has been done at the transformer or using supplementary devices in the grid, this paper suggests a novel method of implementing a robust control strategy using distributed measurements. The voltage control strategy is implemented following a tree structure involving multiple actors. Based on these distributed measurements, multiple flexibility potentials are considered as possible countermeasures. This paper considers both centralized and decentralized control approaches and also concerns with communication failures in a coordinated voltage control algorithm and corresponding actions thereafter. The implementation is done in a way to make the system fail-safe to communication failures. The coordinated voltage control algorithm is implemented on measurement devices and validated using hardware-in-the-loop simulations on a real-time simulator.