Hybrid cooperative Markov-based method for decentralized voltage control and loss reduction via photovoltaic reactive power support

The problem of carrying out effective voltage control in distribution grids with significant photovoltaic penetration has received considerable attention in the recent literature. Hence, a variety of methods that leverage PV inverter reactive support capabilities have been proposed for enhancing the grid voltage profile. Despite its great relevance for the utility, active power loss is, quite notably, an often-neglected parameter in such methods. This work proposes a decentralized voltage control method that hybridizes a novel voltage- oriented Cooperative Partially Observable Markov Decision Process model-based control scheme with a heuristic loss minimization approach. To further improve implementation feasibility, a pilot node approach is adopted to drastically reduce the required number of measurements per voltage control zone. The proposed method, named Voltage Control and Loss Reduction Based Cooperative Partially Observable Markov Decision Process, is validated by means of simulation on a 123-bus test system. Results show that, compared to similar methods, it yields a favorable balance between voltage control and loss reduction without the need of real-time multi-objective optimization.