A Novel Voltage Sensitivity Approach for the Decentralized Control of DG Plants

Renewable distributed generation (DG) is likely to be actively controlled in future distribution networks to mitigate voltage issues resulting from high penetrations. This requires understanding the corresponding dependencies between voltage magnitudes and DG active/reactive power outputs. One approach to compute these dependencies is to use classical sensitivity methods such as those based on the Jacobian matrix inverse. However, updating the latter involves extensive remote monitoring. This paper presents a novel approach to produce voltage sensitivities applying the surface fitting technique on data based solely on the knowledge of network characteristics; making it suitable for decentralized DG control. To assess the benefits, comparisons with classical methods are carried out using the 16-bus UK GDS test network (1-min resolution simulations) considering a decentralized voltage control algorithm that simultaneously caters for the active and reactive power outputs of a single DG plant. The robustness of the proposed approach is also investigated considering changes in network parameters. Finally, the use of coordinated time delays is proposed to cater for multiple DG plants. Comparisons with a centralized optimization demonstrate that the combined use of the proposed voltage sensitivity approach and decentralized control algorithm is an effective and implementable candidate to actively manage renewable DG plants.