Local Phasor-Based Control of DER Inverters for Voltage Regulation on Distribution Feeders

We introduce a new control paradigm termed Phasor-Based Control (PBC) to coordinate Distributed Energy Resources (DER) for improved voltage regulation and other objectives. PBC is a multi-layer control framework where the state of the distribution grid is represented by voltage phasors, and Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) measure the state at critical points in the distribution grid. In the PBC paradigm, a supervisory controller (S-PBC) sets phasor targets which local controllers track. In this paper, we propose a Proportional Integral (PI) implementation for the local control layer (LPBC), to regulate real and reactive power output of distributed inverters to track a voltage phasor target computed by the supervisory layer. We tune the PI controller gains offline with a genetic algorithm that yields better performance than the Ziegler–Nichols method. We benchmark the proposed L-PBC controller against droop volt-var control (DVVC) and observe improved voltage regulation in simulation on the IEEE 13 node unbalanced test feeder (IEEE 13NF). By means of numerical simulation we observe the response of the L-PBC controllers to small and large grid disturbances. Simulations on larger feeders, IEEE 123-node and 647-node, demonstrate challenges with tuning controllers in setups with different amounts of power-voltage coupling.