Distributed active and reactive-power flow management for grid voltage maintenance using real-time pricing strategy

This paper investigates the distributed voltage control problem of a distribution power grid in which a voltage rise occurs due to reverse load flow from distributed generators. A centralized operation to regulate the grid voltage becomes difficult, since the number of distributed generators involved is large. This paper considers a real-time pricing strategy and distributed optimization by each distributed generator. An independent entity or community manager called a utility, who maintains the grid voltage, tries to determine and provide an additional price, which conceptually represents tax or subsidy to each distributed generator. The distributed generator decides its desired output by solving an individual optimization problem including the provided price. This feedback interaction between the utility and distributed generators eventually maintains the grid voltage. The effectiveness of the proposed real-time pricing and distributed decision making methodology is evaluated through a numerical experiment.