Optimal Voltage Control in Distribution Systems With Intermittent PV Using Multiobjective Grey-Wolf-Lévy Optimizer

Abstract

The intermittent photovoltaic (PV) units significantly affect the performance of distribution systems, and they often cause several operational problems, most importantly, voltage rise/drop. At high PV penetration, excessive tap movements of transformers and high curtailed PV power are expected to completely solve the voltage violation problem. In this paper, we propose an optimal voltage control method for distribution systems considering the number of tap movements of transformers and the active power curtailment of PV units. The objective function of the proposed method comprises: 1) voltage drop violation, 2) voltage rise violation, 3) tap movement rate (TMR) of transformers, and 4) curtailed power of PV (CPPV). A multiobjective grey wolf optimizer integrated with a Lévy mutation operator (GWO-Lévy) is formulated to accurately solve the voltage control problem. A 24-h simulation is performed on the 119-bus distribution system with PV and different types of loads. The performance of GWO-Lévy is compared with three other optimizers, finding that it achieves the best performance. The simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method for solving the voltage violation problem with PV while simultaneously optimizing TMR and CPPV.