A local voltage regulator that improves energy savings under Advanced Volt-Var Control

Advanced Volt Var Control (AVVC) systems offer distributed, granular, and dynamic visibility and control to distribution system engineers working to comply with ANSI C84.1 standards while achieving broader goals, such as reducing energy consumption or integrating Distributed Energy Resources (DERs). Local voltage regulation provided by an AVVC system is a means for mitigating the small percentage of loads in a distribution feeder that limit the effectiveness of conservation voltage reduction (CVR) initiatives, for example. An idealized local voltage regulator (LVR) enables complete decoupling from the feeder voltage while providing precise voltage to connected loads and RMS current reduction to the upstream feeder. Fast-acting distributed power electronics acting on the edge of the grid are a natural solution for achieving this type of local voltage control. In this paper, we describe the implementation of a particular type of power electronics based LVR device, including basic theory of operation and functionality and test data. We use this new LVR in distribution system models to estimate the energy savings impact on CVR for representative feeder classes.