Joint Load Scheduling and Voltage Regulation in the Distribution System With Renewable Generators

By equipping with the advanced smart meters and two-way communications infrastructure, smart grids, as a key component of future smart cities, are able to improve the energy efficiency and reduce the energy cost through real-time monitoring and customer load scheduling. However, the high penetration of intermittent renewable energy such as solar power may cause frequent overvoltage and undervoltage problems at certain buses, making the load scheduling face new challenges on voltage regulation. In this paper, we investigate the impact of voltage constraints on load scheduling by power flow analysis in a power distribution system with renewable generators. A voltage regulator (VR) is introduced to regulate the voltage of buses in the distribution system and assist load scheduling. To jointly minimize the cost and stabilize the voltages of the distribution system, we propose a grid-customer coordinated load scheduling strategy, which simultaneously determines the tap changes of the VR and scheduling of customer electricity loads in each time slot. Finally, we evaluate the performance of the proposed strategy based on realistic power demand and renewable energy generation datasets. Extensive numerical results demonstrate that the proposed strategy can remarkably reduce the energy cost and stabilize the voltage fluctuation of distribution systems.