Optimal Sizing of Voltage Control Devices for Distribution Circuit with Intermittent Load

TL;DR

This paper develops a joint control and sizing strategy for voltage regulation devices in distribution circuits with intermittent loads, optimizing power loss and reliability through a two-timescale chance-constrained approach.

Contribution

It introduces a novel two-timescale optimization framework for sizing and controlling voltage devices considering intermittent loads and chance constraints.

Findings

Significant improvement in voltage regulation reliability.

Moderate increase in control device costs.

Efficient heuristics enable real-time implementation.

Abstract

We consider joint control of a switchable capacitor and a D-STATCOM for voltage regulation in a distribution circuit with intermittent load. The control problem is formulated as a two-timescale optimal power flow problem with chance constraints, which minimizes power loss while limiting the probability of voltage violations due to fast changes in load. The control problem forms the basis of an optimization problem which determines the sizes of the control devices by minimizing sum of the expected power loss cost and the capital cost. We develop computationally efficient heuristics to solve the optimal sizing problem and implement real-time control. Numerical experiments on a circuit with high-performance computing (HPC) load show that the proposed sizing and control schemes significantly improve the reliability of voltage regulation on the expense of only a moderate increase in cost.