Optimal Dispatch of Photovoltaic Inverters in Residential Distribution Systems

TL;DR

This paper presents a novel convex optimization approach for optimally dispatching PV inverters in residential systems to improve voltage regulation and power quality amid high PV penetration.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic method using sparsity-promoting regularization and semidefinite relaxation to solve the nonconvex optimal inverter dispatch problem efficiently.

Findings

Method effectively manages voltage regulation in high PV scenarios

Demonstrated on real-world data with promising results

Provides a computationally feasible solution for inverter dispatch

Abstract

Low-voltage distribution feeders were designed to sustain unidirectional power flows to residential neighborhoods. The increased penetration of roof-top photovoltaic (PV) systems has highlighted pressing needs to address power quality and reliability concerns, especially when PV generation exceeds the household demand. A systematic method for determining the active- and reactive-power set points for PV inverters in residential systems is proposed in this paper, with the objective of optimizing the operation of the distribution feeder and ensuring voltage regulation. Binary PV-inverter selection variables and nonlinear power-flow relations render the novel optimal inverter dispatch problem nonconvex and NP-hard. Nevertheless, sparsity-promoting regularization approaches and semidefinite relaxation techniques are leveraged to obtain a computationally feasible convex reformulation. The merits of the proposed approach are demonstrated using real-world PV-generation and load-profile data for an illustrative low-voltage residential distribution system.