Branch-Wise Parallel Successive Algorithm for Online Voltage Regulation in Distribution Networks

Due to high penetration of distributed energy resources, voltage violation has become one of the most critical issues in control of modern power systems with integration of renewable distributed generations (DGs). In this paper, an online distributed approach is proposed to regulate voltage in radial distribution networks via DGs. By fully considering the topological properties of the radial distribution network, the proposed approach successfully decomposes the global voltage regulation problem into a sequence of local reactive power optimization sub-problems with low dimensions. It has been further shown that the optimal solution of the global voltage regulation problem can be achieved by cyclically solving these local subproblems in a branch-wise parallel successive order. Compared with the existing literature, the proposed online distributed voltage regulation approach does not require synchronous updates of all the participants and can improve the performance of the distribution network during the process of its execution. The effectiveness, robustness to fast voltage fluctuations, convergence speed, and insensitivity to parameters of the proposed approach are validated by performing case studies.