Optimized design of voltage control rules for distributed energy sources at substation inverter interfaces
Published Online: Sep 29, 2025
Received: Jan 15, 2025
Accepted: Apr 20, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/amns-2025-1100
Keywords
© 2025 Chen Gu et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Intelligent distribution network includes distributed power supply with various new energy sources as the main form of energy, and the rational construction of intelligent distribution network provides a basis for solving energy and environmental problems. In recent years, distributed power supply has been supported by the state due to its utilization of clean energy and environmentally friendly characteristics, and a series of policies have been introduced to ensure the sustainable and healthy development of distributed power supply, and certain achievements have been made [1-2]. Distributed power, refers to a small-scale (a few kilowatts to 50 megawatts) power source that is compatible with the environment and not constrained by geographic conditions, and is mostly distributed at the end of the distribution network and in heavy load areas [3-4]. Usually, according to the type of new energy utilized and the different means adopted, distributed power supply can be divided into wind power generation utilizing wind energy, photovoltaic power generation utilizing solar energy, fuel cells, and small hydropower utilizing hydropower resources to generate electricity. According to the comprehensive consideration of resource potential, technical characteristics and adaptation conditions, distributed photovoltaic power generation is one of the distributed power sources with the best application conditions and the greatest potential in China [5-6].
Distributed power supply is mainly installed in the site where the user is located, the user’s power demand comes from the power generated by the distributed power supply, and the excess power can be sent back to the grid, which has certain economic benefits. Under the requirements of environmental protection and national support, the promotion of distributed power generation has achieved certain results [7-8]. While achieving development, distributed power access should reach a higher degree of suitability with distribution grid operation [9]. From the point of view of energy utilization, distribution grids installed with multiple distributed power sources utilize an increased proportion of clean energy generation, which reduces carbon dioxide and other gas emissions [10-11].
However, due to its inherent characteristics of distributed power supply, i.e., the uncertainty of power output affected by temperature, light intensity, wind and other factors, it will inevitably bring a certain degree of adverse effects on the safe and efficient operation of the grid, including voltage fluctuations, harmonic pollution, static stability, relay protection, system losses and other aspects. Distributed power supply is mostly accessed from the 10KV distribution network directly facing the users, and the safe and efficient operation of the distribution network is the prerequisite for ensuring the quality of power supply to the users [12-14]. The direction of the distribution network trend due to the access of distributed power supply from unidirectional to bi-directional or multi-directional, inevitably increase the risk of node voltage fluctuations or even over-limit [15]. It is necessary to study the voltage fluctuation and current change caused by its access. In view of the adverse effects of distributed power access to the distribution network, it is necessary to carry out research on the key technology of distributed grid connection. Distributed power supply often uses unit power factor grid connection, when the local load consumption capacity is much smaller than the distributed power supply output, it will make the voltage of the grid connection point changes, and part of the node voltage exceeds the upper limit of the situation occurs from time to time [16-18]. And the distributed power output is not stable, when the output curve and the load curve are not completely consistent, and its output power can not be reasonably consumed, there will be a lack of active power or too much power, resulting in the voltage at the grid-connected point exceeds the prescribed voltage deviation range. Based on the above two points, the node voltage can be adjusted in size by utilizing the characteristics of the inverter output reactive power in the grid-connected system. When the node voltage is too high, reactive power can be absorbed and used to reduce the node voltage, and when the output is insufficient at night and the node voltage is low, reactive power can be issued to support the node voltage [19-22].
The permissible deviation of three-phase supply voltage for distribution networks of 10KV and lower voltage levels is ±7% of the rated voltage. The grid integration of high penetration (PV) power plants injects a large amount of active power into the distribution system, which changes the original direction of the system’s tidal current and has a serious impact on the nodal voltage. Due to the voltage lifting effect of grid-connected power stations, the line node voltage is at risk of overrunning the limit, which will seriously jeopardize the safe and stable operation of power equipment and distribution networks, therefore, for distribution networks containing high penetration distributed power sources, easy, fast and effective voltage control measures must be taken [23-25].
In this paper, we propose a voltage control architecture based on cluster partitioning, which divides distributed energy sources into multiple clusters and performs coordinated optimization within the clusters. Through the distributed optimization algorithm, the voltage is autonomously regulated within each cluster, while the coherent drafting control strategy is used to realize the cooperative control among clusters, so as to improve the flexibility of the method for voltage control and reduce the computational complexity. After that, NVRI is introduced as the optimization target to ensure that the system can maintain good voltage stability under different operating conditions. Finally, the stability of the substation inverter interface voltage is verified through simulation experiments to provide theoretical support for efficient access and operation of distributed energy resources.
By constructing a parallel microgrid system [26] containing

Microgrid system model
The communication network topology graph of the microgrid system is designed as
Where
A hierarchical control architecture is designed for the above microgrid system to effectively achieve the voltage restoration and current equalization objectives. Each distributed power supply contains a local controller, which consists of primary control and secondary control. The primary control consists of a sag control and a voltage-current dual-loop controller, which is responsible for regulating the converter output to ensure that the converter output voltage can track the system voltage rating
where
The distributed iterative strategy [27] is applied to the secondary controller design, for each distributed iterative secondary controller, the control system can be equated to an intelligent body, which interacts with the microgrid system environment and develops the corresponding control strategy by obtaining the neighboring distributed power supply current information. In this control strategy, the sag control virtual resistance
where
where
Distributed power current sharing deviation can be characterized as
where
where
Definition 1.
Definition 2. There should exist a Nash equilibrium solution for a
where
The voltage coordinated optimal control strategy [28] proposed in this section includes inter-cluster coherent drafting control strategy and intra-cluster optimization control strategy. The overall flowchart of the control of the voltage coordinated optimal control strategy for distributed generation clusters is shown in Fig. 2.

Distributed generation cluster voltage control strategy process
Distributed optimization [29] is commonly used to minimize the additive sum type function as its optimization objective function, each self-subject within the optimization system corresponds to a node, data information can be transmitted between nodes, nodes transmitting data information to each other are called neighbors of another node. As shown in the following equation:
The self-subject nodes are first weighted based on the data information of neighboring nodes, and then the gradient-assisted computation is used to update their own data information:
On the basis of the typical distributed gradient descent algorithm, a distributed gradient algorithm that considers the relative state of the self-subject nodes is proposed with full consideration of the relative state of the self-gradient, as follows:
sgn is a relative state function which has only 1 and -1.
Fig. 3 shows the information interaction diagram of distributed generation clusters. Distributed power plants, distributed power sources, and load users in a grid are divided into distributed clusters, each of which has its own leader.

Distributed generation cluster information interaction diagram
Objective function The minimum operating cost of the system is used as the objective function, and the operating cost includes the active output operating cost and the reactive output operating cost:
Distributed generation cluster constraint Controllable distributed energy output constraints:
Cluster system voltage constraints:
Information interaction variables In order to coordinate and optimize the voltage control of distributed generation clusters. Set the objective function of information interaction between clusters
Active information interaction variable:
Between distributed generation clusters, the load customers use the same amount of electricity as the distributed generation units generate, i.e., the power inequality is zero:
Δ
According to the distributed optimization theory, the cluster distributed power active output operating cost model is a quadratic cost function:
The power imbalance reference value corresponding to the distributed generation cluster can be expressed as:
When the system converges to the mean consistent point Δ
Reactive power information interaction variable:
The reactive power output of the distributed generation cluster can be expressed as:
Make the reactive power inequality of the cluster zero:
Leader
Interaction variable:
The cluster distributed power reactive operating cost is modeled as a quadratic cost function:
The power imbalance reference value corresponding to the distributed generation cluster can be expressed as:
When the system converges to the mean consistent point Δ
After the individual cluster hold-up expectation points have been determined, the power inequality measure for each cluster can be determined based on the hold-up equilibrium points:
Intra-cluster active information interaction Based on the amount of active power inequality assigned to each cluster, the update strategy for the active information interaction variable of each cluster leader unit is as follows:
When Δ
The active information variable update strategy is:
Intra-cluster reactive information interaction The update strategy of reactive information interaction variables for each cluster leader unit is as follows:
The reactive information variable update strategy is:
Fig. 4 shows the distributed generation intra-cluster drafting control strategy.

Control strategy of the distributed generation cluster
Due to the access of distributed power in the new energy distribution network, the volatility of the grid voltage becomes stronger, the traditional deterministic criterion is no longer applicable to the current scheduling and control decision-making, and the introduction of probabilistic decision-making analysis is more relevant to the new energy grid. In this paper, the node voltage retention index (NVRI) is used as the evaluation index of voltage fluctuation, which indicates the ability of node voltage to maintain stability after accessing distributed power supply, and the index reflects the situation of nodes near a certain voltage value through the form of probability, and provides guidance for the work of the grid control center in regulating the voltage, and the formula is shown below:
where
The evaluation process of ESS and DR for coordinated voltage in new energy distribution network is as follows:
Simulated in MATLAB to the relevant distributed power supply output data and sampling of output. With the data in (1), firstly, the current calculation is carried out for the system containing DG without accessing ESS and DR, and the node voltage holding index Trend calculation is carried out for the system containing DG with access to ESS and DR, and the nodal voltage holding index Voltage fluctuation evaluation index analysis.
This paper verifies and analyzes the impact of ESS and DR on the coordinated voltage control of new energy distribution networks. Among the examples in this section of the algorithm only in node 10 access to the wind power generation system consisting of three wind turbines whose capacities are all 500kW, the operating parameters of the wind turbine are shown in Table 1. The scale parameter c in the stochastic model parameters of the wind turbine is a parameter reflecting the average wind speed size in the region, so assume that c=8.52m/s at the moment of t-1, take the expected power at this time as the actual output power at the time of t-1, and then compute = t-1V 0.9527, while set c=7.013m/s at the moment of t, and use the Monte Carlo simulation method to Calculate the probabilistic current of the system, and then analyze the voltage fluctuation between the two moments due to the change of wind power output, and α is taken as 1% for NVRI calculation.
The running parameter of the fan
Wind speed(m/s) | Shape parameter |
Scale parameterc/(m/s) | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Rated |
Incised |
Cut out |
|||
10.5 | 3 | 30 | 2.65 | 8.52 | 7.01 |
In this paper, we mainly analyze the effects of ESS and DR on coordinated voltage fluctuation, so we simultaneously access ESS at node 10, and node 9 and node 11 as DR user nodes participating in grid operation scheduling. The role of ESS and DR on coordinated voltage fluctuation is analyzed by analyzing the following two operation scenarios at time t:
Without considering ESS and DR, the distribution grid operates in a wind power access environment. In the operating environment of (1), the role of ESS and DR is considered. At this time, it is assumed that the DR users at nodes 9 and 11 act as interruptible loads at time t, both interrupting 30kW of load at the same time; while the operation of the ESS varies according to the change of the DG’s output power, with the output power of the wind power at time t-1 as the reference value, when the DG’s output power increases at time t, the node voltage rises, at which time the ESS is recharged, and when the output power of the wind power decreases at time t , the node voltage decreases, at this time the ESS is discharged, and the charging and discharging power are both 200kW.
Fig. 5 shows the probability density (PDF) of the voltage distribution of node 10 in two operation cases, where (a) and (b) are the PDF without considering ESS and DR and the PDF considering ESS and DR, respectively.Fig. 6 shows the cumulative probability distribution (CDF) of the voltage at node 10.

The probability density of the voltage distribution under two kinds of strips

The voltage cumulative probability distribution of node 10
From the figure, it can be seen that in the operation state of (1), due to the random fluctuation of the fan output, the possibility of the voltage fluctuation range of node 10 at the moment of t is in the range of 0.91338~1.03796p.u., while in the operation state of (2), due to the consideration of the coordinated voltage effect of ESS and DR, it can be seen that the possibility of the voltage fluctuation range of the node 10 at this time is in the range of 0.93934~1.03914p.u. The CDFs of node 10 are shown in Fig. 6. 1.03914p.u., and the fluctuation probability is greater in the interval of voltage value of 0.94659~0.9997p.u., which makes the transition of the node voltage between t-1 and t moments smoother. The node voltage retention index NVRI can be seen that the value of the evaluation index of node 10 after considering ESS and DR (0.63975) is smaller than the value when ESS and DR are not considered (0.33757). The above analysis can prove the effectiveness of ESS and DR in smoothing the voltage fluctuation caused by DG.
In this paper, wind farm data and load data of a place in Northwest China are selected for example analysis. The wind farm data and load data are predicted using the long and short-term memory network based on phase space reconstruction, and the prediction results of the wind power data and user load data for the coming day are shown in Fig. 7, with (a) and (b) referring to the wind power prediction and load prediction, respectively. It is found that the prediction results of wind power prediction and user load data are basically similar to the change trend of the original data with small differences, which shows that the stability and applicability of the algorithm proposed in this paper are good.

Prediction of wind power data and user load data for the future
Since the wind power data and load data are collected at an interval of 15 min, the prediction for a day’s wind power and power consumption is output at an interval of 15 min, so for this case, the predicted values of these two data are sampled and discretized at hourly intervals. The data and error values obtained for one day of sampling are shown in Fig. 8, with (a) and (b) being the load and wind functions, respectively. The load varies relatively steadily throughout the day, with peaks between 6-13pm and 14-21pm, and the rest of the day is relatively flat, with no particularly large fluctuations overall. The wind fluctuates relatively more, with a trough in the early hours of the day (2am-4am), with relatively low wind power, and peaks in the midday and evening hours, with higher generation power. However, overall, the user load is significantly higher than the wind power generation, so other power generation equipment in the system is needed as a supplementary power source, and power purchases from the grid are also considered. The two optimization scenarios are used as indicators for the arithmetic analysis, respectively, and compared with the open-loop optimization using the methodology of this paper to demonstrate the effectiveness of the methodology of this paper.

Data and error values for one day
The system is controlled by the method of this paper with the minimization of power interaction with the grid as the objective function. Figure 9 shows the power interaction before and after the optimization of this paper’s method. It can be seen that before model predictive control of the system, the amount of interaction with the grid fluctuates greatly in each time period within 24 hours, especially during the peaks and valleys of electricity consumption to produce major power interactions. Before the control of the method in this paper, during the time period of 2-4 am, which is the time of low electricity consumption, the power generation system produces more power than the user load, and at this time the system outputs a large amount of power to the grid. At the peak time of electricity consumption in the evening, the system generates less power than the user load, at which time it purchases power from the grid. After the control of the method in this paper, the system interacts with the grid significantly less power, and the scheduling of the battery storage device is relatively more frequent, when the system is not generating enough power, as a discharge device to supply power, to reduce the input power from the grid, and when the generation is more sufficient, as a storage device, to store the excess power, to reduce the delivery of power to the grid. Since the wind power generation as a whole is smaller than the user load, it is considered that the wind power is all consumed, and the cogeneration is used as the main supplementary power.

This article is optimized to interact with the electricity
Fig. 10 shows the power changes of CHP system and battery before and after the control of this paper’s method, (a) and (b) are the CHP power changes and battery power changes before and after the control of this paper’s method, respectively. From the total 24-hour interaction with the grid before and after the control of this paper’s method, it can be seen that the total 24-hour interaction of the system with the grid is reduced by 3168.542 KW of power interaction after the control of this paper’s method, and the optimization performance is improved by 73.92%. The strategy of this paper’s method controls the power interaction between the system and the grid very well and avoids the negative impact of a large amount of power grid connection on the stability of the grid power supply.

The power change of CHP system and battery before and after control
The minimum interaction and the minimum cost of the system operation are used as the objective functions, which are controlled by the method of this paper. Since the objective value of the first optimization objective is the solution to be optimized in the second objective function, the objective value of the first part of the solution is considered as the initial value of the second part of the decomposition when the multi-objective function is processed, and the solution is constrained to be within the maximum range of the objective value of the first part of the solution. Fig. 11 shows the cost changes for 24 hours before and after the control of the method of this paper. The operating cost of the system at each moment after the control of this paper’s method is kept at a lower level relative to the pre-optimization period.

The cost changes of the 24 hours before and after the control of this article
Fig. 12 shows the power change of each module before and after the control of this paper’s method, where (a) to (c) denote the change of CHP’s cogeneration system, battery charging and discharging power, and power interacting with the grid, respectively, before and after the control of this paper’s method in a 24-hour period. The total cost of the multi-objective function obtained before and after the control of this paper’s method over a 24-hour period. From the figure, it is found that after using multi-objective as the optimization index, the interaction of the system with the grid increases significantly, especially after the control of this paper’s method, the output power of the grid is mostly negative, which indicates that the system delivers power to the grid, and it also implies that the system improves the economic index by selling power to the grid. At this time the number of discharges of the energy storage system’s also increases to match the cogeneration system to provide the customer load. When the system generator can satisfy the load, the strategy implemented in this paper’s method is to sell as much power to the grid as possible, while taking into account the metric of keeping the interaction with the grid low and reducing the behavior of charging the batteries. When the power generation unit cannot meet the system load, the methodology in this paper first considers obtaining power support from the energy storage system and then purchasing the rest from the grid. This reduces the interaction with the grid and the cost of purchasing power for the system.

The power change of each module before and after the control of this article
The daily operating cost of the system after the control of this paper’s method is reduced by 1229.47 yuan, and the economic efficiency is improved by 4.51%. The analysis of the results using these two methods as optimization indexes shows that the reliability and economy of the distributed energy system have been improved, which to a certain extent proves the effectiveness of the control strategy of this paper’s method.
This paper proposes a voltage control rule optimization design method based on hierarchical control, aiming at solving the voltage fluctuation problem of distributed energy resources at the inverter interface, and providing an effective solution for the college operation of distributed energy resources. The main conclusions are as follows:
Under the two optimization strategies of “minimum interaction with the grid and minimum operation cost”, the performance of the method in this paper has an impact on the stability and economy of the system. The data results show that the optimization of the system in this paper reduces the interaction with the grid 3168.542KW, improves the reliability of the energy system power supply, and the daily operating cost of the system is reduced by 1229.47 yuan, and the economic efficiency is improved by 4.51%, which better reflects the effectiveness of the model predictive control in this energy system.