Optimal Control of Distribution Networks

The recent proliferation of distributed energy resources at the distribution level of the electricity grid has altered the landscape of power sector. The power output of these generation units depends on the geographic and atmospheric condition, thus highly variable. Moreover these sources are integrated to distribution feeder via power electronic based converters which lacks mechanical inertia to instantaneously counter voltage fluctuations occurring in the grid. While the source side is populated by these stochastic based generations, demand side is now dictated by sophisticated power electronic based devices which requires a higher voltage quality for reliable operation. The existing state-of-the-art techniques are proven to be ineffective in tacking this voltage control issue in the modern distribution grid. This thesis presents a network reduction based controller design approach to overcome these challenges. The effectiveness of this algorithm is validated by theoretical justifications and practical simulations on 136-Brazilian test system.