Optimal OLTC voltage control scheme to enable high solar penetrations

•An optimal On-Load Tap Changer (OLTC) voltage control scheme was proposed.•Convexity is achieved using linearizations.•Feeder voltages are centered around 1p.u. while minimizing tap operations.•The scheme enables 67% higher PV penetration without over-voltage issues.•Computation cost for a feeder with 4 OLTCs and 1623 buses is only 1.1s. High solar Photovoltaic (PV) penetration on distribution systems can cause over-voltage problems. To this end, an Optimal Tap Control (OTC) method is proposed to regulate On-Load Tap Changers (OLTCs) by minimizing the maximum deviation of the voltage profile from 1p.u. on the entire feeder. A secondary objective is to reduce the number of tap operations (TOs), which is implemented for the optimization horizon based on voltage forecasts derived from high resolution PV generation forecasts. A linearization technique is applied to make the optimization problem convex and able to be solved at operational timescales. Simulations on a PC show the solution time for one time step is only 1.1s for a large feeder with 4 OLTCs and 1623 buses. OTC results are compared against existing methods through simulations on two feeders in the Californian network. OTC is firstly compared against an advanced rule-based Voltage Level Control (VLC) method. OTC and VLC achieve the same reduction of voltage violations, but unlike VLC, OTC is capable of coordinating multiple OLTCs. Scalability to multiple OLTCs is therefore demonstrated against a basic conventional rule-based control method called Autonomous Tap Control (ATC). Comparing to ATC, the test feeder under control of OTC can accommodate around 67% more PV without over-voltage issues. Though a side effect of OTC is an increase in tap operations, the secondary objective functionally balances operations between all OLTCs such that impacts on their lifetime and maintenance are minimized.