Comparative Study of Voltage Regulation Techniques in PV Rich LV Feeders

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative study of the voltage regulation techniques currently used by electricity network service providers, specifically LV-STATCOM and Community Energy Storage, alongside modern inverter control functions, such as Volt-VAr and Volt-Watt responses. Modern inverters are equipped with built-in Volt-VAr and Volt-Watt functions for immediate use, while Rule-Based Control was selected for Energy Storage control, as it is commonly implemented in off-the-shelf residential storage devices. The aim of this paper is to enhance understanding of the efficacy of these voltage regulation techniques in terms of their voltage management performance and utilization of feeder capacity. To normalize network performance parameters, two indices are introduced: maximum voltage deviation and feeder reserve capacity, which analyze voltage management and the hosting capacity of the feeder, respectively. A case study 300 m, 4-wire, LV feeder based on typical Australian design parameters is used to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed control methods through a time-series power flow simulation in OpenDSS.