Measurement-Based Fast Coordinated Voltage Control for Transmission Grids

The increasing integration of utility-scale renewable energy sources (RESs) brings emerging challenges to the classical problems of voltage control in transmission grids, including increased potential for voltage violations. To address this challenge, we present a novel measurement-based coordinated voltage control scheme that can enable fast participation of RESs. In this approach, RESs are coordinated with the traditional voltage control devices such as synchronous generators (SGs) and static var compensators (SVCs) to maintain all bus voltages within operational limits while respecting device power limits. The control scheme allows different priorities to be assigned to different control resources, and ensures that both voltage and reactive power constraints are met in steady-state whenever it is possible to do so. The controller design requires only an approximate model of the steady-state relationships between voltage and reactive power in the system, and in online operation, processes voltage and reactive power measurements to produce set-point updates for RESs, SVCs, and SGs; this feedback provides robustness against both model uncertainty and unmeasured disturbances. The feasibility and effectiveness of the controller is demonstrated via simulation case studies on a detailed power system model.