Adaptive Control of Distributed Energy Resources for Distribution Grid Voltage Stability

TL;DR

This paper presents a decentralized, model-free adaptive control scheme for PV smart inverters to maintain voltage stability in distribution grids, even under unstable or malicious control configurations, validated through experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel decentralized, communication-free adaptive control method that mitigates inverter instability effects without external configuration.

Findings

Effective stabilization of voltage using the adaptive scheme.

Validated on IEEE 37 and 8500 node test feeders.

Robust against malicious inverter control alterations.

Abstract

Volt-VAR and Volt-Watt functionality in photovoltaic (PV) smart inverters provide mechanisms to ensure system voltage magnitudes and power factors remain within acceptable limits. However, these control functions can become unstable, introducing oscillations in system voltages when not appropriately configured or maliciously altered during a cyberattack. In the event that Volt-VAR and Volt-Watt control functions in a portion of PV smart inverters in a distribution grid are unstable, the proposed adaptation scheme utilizes the remaining and stably-behaving PV smart inverters and other Distributed Energy Resources to mitigate the effect of the instability. The adaptation mechanism is entirely decentralized, model-free, communication-free, and requires virtually no external configuration. We provide a derivation of the adaptive control approach and validate the algorithm in experiments on the IEEE 37 and 8500 node test feeders.