Decentralized reactive power control of distributed PV and wind power generation units using an optimized fuzzy-based method

Abstract The presence of power electronic-based wind turbines and photovoltaic systems in distribution networks has provided distribution companies an opportunity to implement voltage control through using the reactive power of these systems. In this paper, a decentralized method based on fuzzy logic is proposed to control the reactive power of distributed generations (DGs) regarding the technical constraints. The fuzzy system is optimized by gradient descent algorithm (GDA) and then implemented on various DG technologies including a photovoltaic (PV) system, permanent magnet synchronous generator (PMSG) wind turbine and also a doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) wind turbine. The system under study is tied to a real distribution network. Having simulated the system, the paper shows that the fuzzy system can appropriately determine the desired reactive power that should be produced by each DG based on the voltage variation of the bus at which the DG is connected. Furthermore, a centralized voltage control is also applied to the same network to verify the performance of the method proposed. The verification indicates that the method is capable of finding the near-optimal solution. A scenario in which an unwanted conflict appears in the DGs’ function is defined in detail and then a strategy is presented to resolve the situation. In addition to this, the coordination between the stator of the wind turbines and grid side converter (GSC) is examined. To investigate the robustness of the proposed method in different distribution networks, simulation results are also presented for IEEE 33-bus distribution test system. The numerical results show that the fuzzy system can effectively control the voltage of the DG connection bus.