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Electric distribution grids are seeing an increased penetration of photovoltaic (PV) generation. High PV generation exceeding the grid load demand results in a reverse active power flow in the grid, which raises the voltage level. This paper presents a reactive power controller to overcome the overvoltage problem in the distribution system. A sequentially coordinated and cooperative volt/var control technique is presented. The proposed controller aims to use as low reactive power as possible while mitigating the voltage issues. Accordingly, it reduces the active power loss associated with reactive power flow and reduces the probability for active power curtailment of the PV system. The controller is developed for each lateral and is replicated for all laterals. The lateral controller coordinates the operation of the smart PV inverters in a sequential manner. Cooperative control is proposed between the laterals' controllers as well and is engaged when the individual laterals' controllers are unable to solve their overvoltage issues. The performance of the proposed controller is evaluated by comparing it to two other volt/var controllers, and it demonstrates better performance in terms of reactive power requirement. To conduct the simulation study, a modified version of the unbalanced IEEE 13-bus system is utilized, which includes an additional 44 low-voltage bus. The study involves simulating 720 operating points across daily time series. The results indicate that the proposed controller effectively addresses overvoltage problems that occur during periods of high PV generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The optimum penetration of distributed generations into the distribution grid provides several technical and economic benefits. However, the computational time required to solve the constrained optimization problems increases with the increasing network scale and may be too long for online implementations. This paper presents a parallel solution of a multi-objective distributed generation (DG) allocation and sizing problem to handle a large number of computations. The aim is to find the optimum number of processors in addition to energy loss and DG cost minimization. The proposed formulation is applied to a 33-bus test system, and the results are compared with themselves and with the base case operating conditions using the optimal values and three popular multi-objective optimization metrics. The results show that comparable solutions with high-efficiency values can be obtained up to a certain number of processors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]