Voltage regulators operational stress analysis and reduction in distribution systems with distributed generation

This paper presents an analysis and mitigation method of voltage regulators operational stress in a distribution test feeder with distributed generation. The study has assessed how the addition of a photovoltaic system in one of the farthest portions of the system can affect the amount of operations of these equipment when the solar resource is highly variable. The mitigation method considered utilizes a BESS to perform filtering of the power injected into the grid. The method has been enhanced in order to reduce the size of the BESS needed for the application. The simulation results show that the proposed methods can significantly reduce the operational stress of the most affected voltage regulators and that it is possible to reduce the costs of the solution through adaptations in the control algorithm logic.