Optimal placement of voltage regulators for photovoltaic hosting capacity maximization

Abstract

With the rapidly growing integration of distributed photovoltaic (PV) generation, the need to maximize the hosting capacity (HC) of PV generation in distribution networks (DN) has become a major concern. To maximize the size of PV power absorbed by the system while maintaining required levels of power quality and system stability, this paper has proposed a deterministic optimization based optimal voltage regulator (VR) placement model. This model maximizes the installed capacity of PV generation and minimizes the investment costs of VR, while maintaining the bus voltage within their operating limits. Mathematically, this optimal VR placement problem is formulated as a nonlinear program, then the linearization methods are employed to transform the model to a mix-integer linear program. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated using a modified IEEE 33-bus distribution system.