Testing New Reactive Power Control of DERs by Real-Time Simulation

In the smart grid paradigm, the reactive power control of distributed energy resources (DERs) plays a key role improving the voltage profile in the distribution systems. This topic has been addressed by previous papers in which the Optimal Set-Point Design (OSPD) of DER reactive control, based on a decentralized approach, has been developed. The OSPD determines the set point of a reactive power closed-loop regulation scheme according to an optimization strategy. After briefly recalling the OSPD procedure, the article presents validation studies aiming at testing the effectiveness of the OSPD. The validation is based on a hardware-in-the-loop real-time simulation facility. In particular, an experimental setup has been arranged and presented, in which the system is simulated using the real-time digital simulator (RTDS), while the OSPD has been implemented on a PC in the LabView environment. The OSPD has been developed by considering two different optimization objectives, namely the feeder voltage profile optimization and the distribution losses minimization. The achieved results are then presented and also compared with the ones obtained a classical regulation scheme.