Distributed Voltage Control in Distribution Networks with High Penetration of Photovoltaic Systems

In this paper, a distributed method for reactive power management in a distribution system has been presented. The proposed method focuses on the voltage rise where the distribution systems are equipped with a considerable number of photovoltaic units. This paper proposes the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMMs) approach for solving the optimal voltage control problem in a distributed manner in a distribution system with high penetration of PVs. Also, the proposed method uses a clustering approach to divide the network into partitions based on the coupling degrees among different nodes. The optimal reactive power control strategy is conducted in each partition and integrated using ADMM. The proposed method is tested on a 33 bus IEEE distribution test system and a modified IEEE 123-node system. The result evidence that the proposed method has used the lower reactive power if compared to the conventional method.