Voltage imbalance mitigation in an active distribution network using decentralized current control

Abstract Voltage imbalance (VI) is caused by the difference in connected single-phase load or generation in a low voltage distribution network (DN).VI increase in a smart distribution grid is due to the current practice of increasing single-phase distributed generators such as photovoltaic (PV) systems. This paper proposes a decentralized control method to mitigate VI using distributed batteries included in smart grid interfaced residential PV systems. To mitigate VI using the batteries in this way, five challenges must be overcome, i.e., equalizing all battery stress currents within the DN, mitigating VI in abnormal conditions such as signal loss among bus controllers, being immune from the distorted feedback measurements, minimizing the steady-state error at different loads, and overcoming the insufficient number or capacity of the distributed batteries at the same bus. Three fuzzy logic controllers (FLC) are proposed at each bus to overcome these five tasks based on a decentralized control scheme. The proposed decentralized control based on FLC is compared with centralized control based on a PI controller. The proposed control method is tested and verified using simulations in the MATLAB/Simulink software, and the results validate the ability of the scheme to alleviate VI on a smart distribution network under both normal and abnormal conditions.