Control of distributed energy resources for reactive power support

This paper proposes a method to utilize distributed energy resources (DERs) to provide reactive power support for voltage control in electric power systems. Rather than controlling each of these resources directly, a distributed control algorithm is developed in which a leader node sends a request for reactive power to a few DERs that it can directly communicate with. Then through an iterative algorithm, the initial request is distributed among all DERs so that they collectively fulfill the leader node´s request. A case study illustrating this method is presented.