An Optimal Approach for Voltage Regulation and PV Hosting Capacity Enhancement Using Nodal Pricing

Abstract

The high penetration of renewable energy resources in the distribution systems (DS), i.e., photovoltaic (PV) and wind systems, affects the system voltage profiles and causes severe violation problems. Therefore, the PVs output powers are curtailed in specific feeder nodes to mitigate the DS overvoltage problems, which causes unfair profit distribution among prosumers and decreases the hosting capacity of the PVs. This paper proposes a novel approach for optimizing the output powers of the PV sources in the DS. The optimal proposed approach aims to maximize the power generation of the PV prosumers while enhancing the network voltage profiles. First, an optimal power flow technique is carried out to compute active and reactive PV power's shadow prices to mitigate voltage violations. Then dynamic pricing is carried out online for the PV powers in DS using a multi-agent system. Finally, the performance of the proposed approach is identified through its application to the 33 and 5-bus test feeders. The results show an excellent performance for the proposed method in mitigating overvoltage problems and minimizing the PV power's curtailment.