Abstract:

In a context of accelerating deployment of distributed generation in power distribution grid, this work proposes an answer to an important and urgent need for better management tools in order to ‘intelligently’ operate these grids and maintain quality of service. To this aim, a model-based predictive control (MPC) strategy is proposed, allowing efficient re-routing of power flows using flexible assets, while respecting operational constraints as well as the voltage constraints prescribed by ENEDIS, the French distribution grid operator. The flexible assets used in the case study—a low-voltage power distribution grid in southern France—are a biogas plant and a water tower. Non-parametric machine-learning-based models, i.e., Gaussian process regression (GPR) models, are developed for intraday forecasting of global horizontal irradiance (GHI), grid load, and water demand, to better anticipate emerging constraints. The forecasts’ quality decreases as the forecast horizon grows longer, but quickly stabilizes around a constant error value. Then, the impact of forecasting errors on the performance of the control strategy is evaluated, revealing a resilient behaviour where little degradation is observed in terms of performance and computation cost. To enhance the strategy’s resilience and minimise voltage overflow, a worst-case scenario approach is proposed for the next time step and its contribution is examined. This is the main contribution of the paper. The purpose of the min–max problem added upstream of the main optimisation problem is to both anticipate and minimise the voltage overshooting resulting from forecasting errors. In this min–max problem, the feasible space defined by the confidence intervals of the forecasts is searched, in order to determine the worst-case scenario in terms of constraint violation, over the next time step. Then, such information is incorporated into the decision-making process of the main optimisation problem. Results show that these incidents are indeed reduced thanks to the min–max problem, both in terms of frequency of their occurrence and the total surface area of overshooting.

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