A New Approach for the Incorporation of the End-User’s Smart Power–Electronic Interface in Voltage Support Application

Abstract

Technology advancement in power–electronic interfaces and their evolution open an opportunity to end-users to benefit from their newfound capability. For the end-users, power–electronic interfaces can act as Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) for reactive power injection and absorption. If these power–electronic interface capabilities can be properly integrated into traditional utility system operations, they can be used as beneficial tools for distribution management and voltage profile enhancement. Considering the present distribution system, it is not possible to communicate to all DERs. In this paper, we considered two proposed residential-control and droop-control methods. The multi-criteria decision-making technique (MCDM), along with fuzzy theory, was used to prioritize candidate buses for their participation in the Volt-VAR program. In this paper, the contribution of active DERs in reactive power compensation was evaluated.