Activate distributed energy resources' services: Hierarchical voltage controller as an application

The flexibilities from controllable distributed energy resources (DERs) offer the opportunities to mitigate some of the operation problems in the power distribution grid. The provision of system services requires the aggregation and coordination of their flexibilities, in order to obtain the flexible capacity of large scale.

In this paper, a hierarchical controller is presented to activate the aggregation, and tries to obtain a global optimum of the grid operation. A distribution grid with large penetration of highly varying generation or load is under the risk that the voltage quality delivered to the end users is very poor.

Hence, a coordinated voltage control function is investigated given such control hierarchy utilizing the flexibilities from the DER units to obtain an optimal voltage profile along the distribution feeder. The results are two folded: the controller enables the efficient aggregation and dispatch, and it simplifies the optimization complexity; the involvement of DER flexibilities in voltage services can significantly improve the voltage quality and reduce the grid power loss without additional regulating devices.