Consumer voltage regulation using coordinated control of distributed static synchronous compensators - μSTATCOMs

Interconnection of photovoltaic power generation systems (PVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) to distribution lines is increasing. This will cause voltage rises due to surplus power injected by PVs during daytime and voltage drops due to simultaneous charging of EVs at nighttime. To cope with this problem, CRIEPI has been developing a distributed static synchronous compensator named μSTATCOM. μSTATCOM is a power-electronics-based reactive-power supply, which is supposed to be installed at a consumer end. This paper proposes a coordinated control algorithm for μSTATCOMs installed at consumer ends under a common pole-mounted transformer, and power-flow simulation results taking μSTATCOMs into account are presented. The simulation results show that the proposed coordinated control algorithm is able to regulate consumer voltages within the range restricted by law for cases where the consumer voltages deviate from the restricted range, without μSTATCOMs, due to PVs or EVs.