Effective CVR planning with smart DGs using MINLP

Conservation Voltage Reduction (CVR) schemes and renewable energy based distributed generation (DG) can be coordinated to maintain lower node voltages for reducing load consumption and line losses in distribution systems. In addition, smart inverter interfaced DGs are significant resources to maintain the lowest possible voltages at the loading points and adjacent nodes. This paper describes a method of coordination of distributed smart inverters and existing network infrastructure (i.e., capacitor banks and step voltage regulator) of radial distribution system for precise CVR planning. This helps to keep the source voltage and LTC stepper in a range which can maintain the voltage profile within the lower ANSI band (0.95 p.u.–1.0 p.u) throughout the feeder. A mixed integer nonlinear Programming (MINLP) formulation is used to co-ordinate the whole network to keep the voltage in the desired service range. The IEEE 37 bus test system is used to validate the method and to compare with the outcome of conventional inverter based DGs for CVR deployment.