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Recent developments in the renewable energy sector have seen an unprecedented growth in residential photovoltaic (PV) installations. However, high PV penetration levels often lead to overvoltage problems in low-voltage (LV) distribution feeders. Smart inverter control such as active power curtailment (APC)-based overvoltage control can be implemented to overcome these challenges. The APC technique utilizes a constant droop-based approach which curtails power rigidly, which can lead to significant energy curtailment in the LV distribution feeders. In this paper, different variations of the APC technique with linear, quadratic, and exponential droops have been analyzed from the point-of-view of energy curtailment for a LV distribution network in North America. Further, a combinatorial approach using various droop-based APC methods in conjunction with adaptive dynamic programming (ADP) as a supplementary control scheme has also been proposed. The proposed approach minimizes energy curtailment in the LV distribution network by adjusting the droop gains. Simulation results depict that ADP in conjunction with exponential droop reduces the energy curtailment to approximately 50% compared to using the standard linear droop. 

Overvoltage is one of the major issues on distribution grids with high penetration of photovoltaic (PV) generation. Overvoltage could be prevented through the control of active/reactive power of PVs. However, given the high R/X ratio of low voltage feeders, voltage control by using reactive power would not be as effective as using active power. Therefore, active power curtailment (APC) of PVs, though not desirable, becomes necessary at times to prevent the overvoltage issues. Existing literature is rich in centralized and droop-based methods for APC and/or reactive power control of PVs to prevent overvoltage issues. In this context, this paper revisits the most popular existing methods, and evaluates the performance of droop-based and centralized methods using a typical North American 240 V low voltage feeder with 24 residential homes. In this work, our key findings are: a) droop-based methods provided conservative solutions or did not eliminate the overvoltages completely, b) power flow sensitivity based droop approach led to 13% more curtailment than the centralized approaches, c) centralized approach had 40% less energy curtailed compared with standard droop while no overvoltages were observed, and d) operating PVs at non-unity power factor in centralized approach led to 5% less energy curtailment. 

We develop hierarchical coordination frameworks to optimally manage active and reactive power dispatch of number of spatially distributed electric vehicles (EVs) incorporating distribution grid level constraints. The frameworks consist of detailed mathematical models, which can benefit the operation of both entities involved, i.e., the grid operations and EV charging. The first model comprises of a comprehensive optimal power flow model at the distribution grid level, while the second model represents detailed optimal EV charging with reactive power support to the grid. We demonstrate benefits of coordinated dispatch of active and reactive power from EVs using a 33-node distribution feeder with large number of EVs (more than 5,000). Case studies demonstrate that, in constrained distribution grids, coordinated charging reduces the average cost of EV charging if the charging takes place at non-unity power factor mode compared to unity power factor. Similarly, the results also demonstrate that distribution grids can accommodate charging of increased number of EVs if EV charging takes place at non-unity power factor mode compared to unity power factor.