Safe Flexibility in Active Distribution Grids: A Practical Data-Driven Approach

Abstract

Distributed energy resources (DERs), such as photovoltaic units, wind turbines and batteries, are able to increase operational flexibility in Distribution Networks (DNs) that can be used to resolve power quality issues. Furthermore, the advances in metering infrastructure, such as the roll-out of smart meters in many countries worldwide, provides better observability of DNs. However, DERs in DNs usually belong to different stakeholders with alternative objectives that might even be conflicting (e.g., grid constraints are not considered by all). This paper presents a practical approach, based on a data-driven scheme, to safely use the DER operational flexibility and, at the same time, respect the objectives of individual households, network operators, and aggregators. First, a grid health estimator is constructed using Support-Vector Machines (SVM). Then, a real-time modification signal is used to alleviate network constraints violations. The performance of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated using the MV and LV European benchmark grids.