Optimal Power Flow Problem with Energy Storage, Voltage and Reactive Power Control

The integration of renewable energy into an electric grid introduces new challenges to achieve optimal operating point for the power flow problem, because of randomness in generation and the distance between generation and consumption. These challenges can be overcome by using storage with appropriate capacity and efficient strategy to charge and discharge. In this work, we introduce a model of the power flow problem with storage so that it can be used to inject active and reactive power into the grid. We formulate an optimal power flow problem for a distribution grid with storage as a multi-period control problem based on the deterministic and stochastic nature of load and generation. We propose a multi-objective optimization function, in which the operating objectives are as follows: i) injecting reactive power into the power system for decreasing distribution loss and voltage deviation; and ii) maximizing renewable energy integration with minimum curtailment.