Advances in Volt-var Control Approaches in Utility
Distribution Systems
Harsha V. Padullaparti, Quan Nguyen and Surya Santoso
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX.
Abstract—In recent years, voltage and reactive power control in
distribution systems is becoming increasingly complex with the
growing penetration levels of distributed energy resources
(DER), electric vehicle loads, and new requirements like
conservation voltage reduction (CVR). Traditional approaches
of voltage control rely on slow acting electromechanical devices
installed on the primary feeder. These approaches are not
suitable for handling the changing paradigm in the distribution
systems towards smart grid. Advanced volt-var control
technologies like smart inverters and other distributed
secondary-side voltage regulation devices are perceived to be the
key enabling technologies to meet the requirements of future
smart grid such as effective voltage control and ability for
seamless integration of DER. This paper reviews existing and
emerging volt-var control techniques in the distribution systems
with DER.
Index Terms—distributed power generation, reactive power,
SCADA systems, smart grids, voltage control.
I. INTRODUCTION
In the competitive market environment existing today,
distribution utilities are focused on improving their operational
efficiencies, minimizing electrical losses, and improving
service quality for better profitability. Efficient volt-var
control (VVC) is important in achieving these objectives. The
primary objective of VVC is to maintain acceptable voltages
at all points along the distribution feeder under all loading
conditions. ANSI standard C84.1-2011 [1] specifies that
regardless of nominal operating voltage, the service and
utilization voltages must remain within Range A under normal
operating conditions. It means the service voltage range on a
120V base is 114–126V and the utilization voltage range is
110-126V. Maintaining power factor close to unity is second
objective of VVC. The fundamental components available at
distribution level to perform VVC are load tap changer (LTC)
transformers, line voltage regulators, and fixed or switched
capacitors. These electromechanical control devices are
installed on the primary feeder and are controlled either in
centralized or decentralized fashion to perform VVC [2].
The technological advancements in various domains such
as sensors, communications, computation and controls have
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facilitated availability of near real-time status and
measurement information from various locations along the
feeder at a central location [3]. This rich set of information is
allowing volt-var optimization (VVO) applications at the
central location to determine optimized switching decisions
based on near real-time data, assuring fast VVC response to
the varying operating conditions.
Figure 1. Illustration of future smart grid scenario.
Despite the complex nature of distribution system and
limited number of regulating equipment, the traditional
approaches of VVC have provided satisfactory performance
so far. However, the growing penetration levels of distributed
energy resources (DER), fast charging electric vehicle loads
and their associated dynamics are now posing new challenges
to VVC that rely on slow acting control assets. Additionally,
the smart grid initiatives like conservation voltage reduction
(CVR) are making the operating voltage limits more stringent.
The sparsely located electromechanical voltage regulating
equipment that are installed on the primary cannot handle the
multitude of dynamics arising from the variabilities of new
sources and loads and provide the desired VVC performance
necessary for future smart grid depicted in Fig. 1. Therefore,
there is an urgent need for implementing effective VVC
techniques that can actively control feeder voltage profiles to
squeeze more capacity out of existing networks and to meet
CVR objectives. Research efforts have indicated that enabling
the DER to participate in the active control of voltages results
in improved voltage profiles in the active distribution systems
i.e., distribution systems with DER. In addition, many
advanced VVC devices are now commercially available to
provide secondary-side reactive power compensation or
voltage regulation [4]-[6]. These devices have shown effective
VVC performance in the field trials signifying their potential
wide spread deployment in the near future [7]-[10].
Given the significant advancement in the VVC
technologies in recent years, we have felt the need for
reviewing the VVC technologies available as on date. In this
paper, various VVC approaches are reviewed which are
organized into five sections. Traditional approaches of VVC
that rely on control assets on the primary side are detailed in
Section II. The need for advanced VVC technologies is
explained in Section III. Emerging technologies providing
VVC on the secondary-side are presented in Section IV and
the summary is given in Section V.
II. TRADITIONAL APPROACHES OF VOLT-VAR CONTROL
AND OPTIMIZATION ON PRIMARY SIDE
A. VVC using Autonomous Controllers
The VVC in its primitive form uses electromechanical
VVC devices such as substation load tap changer transformers
(LTCs), switched capacitor banks, and voltage regulators [11].
These devices are operated by autonomous controllers,
typically mounted on themselves, that take control decisions
based on local voltage and current measurements [12], [13].
The response of these controllers improves the voltages in the
system. Some utilities use line drop compensation (LDC) as
shown in Fig. 2 for automatic control of LTC tap position to
regulate the voltage at a point along the feeder. The voltage at
the feeder head and the feeder loading are monitored by the
LDC using potential and current transformers (PT, CT),
respectively. The resistance and reactance (R, X) of the feeder
up to the regulating point are set in the LDC so that the
voltage drop in the feeder appears across the voltage
regulating relay. Then the LDC controls the LTC tap position
to compensate for this voltage drop.
CT
I include minimizing demand, minimizing circuit losses,
Regulation point
Ict R X
R X
(R+jX)Ict Voltage
PT Vpt Regulating
Relay
Figure 2. Line drop compensation.
Although VVC using autonomously controlled
electromechanical devices works well, it has serious
limitations in the presence of DER. The studies reported in
[14]-[17] show that with VVC using autonomous controllers,
there is a possibility of experiencing both high as well as low
service voltages due to the presence of DER. The highly
variable nature of power output from DER such as PV and
wind can increase the number of switching operations of the
electromechanical VVC equipment, significantly reducing
their service life due to excessive wear and tear [18], [19].
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B. SCADA Controlled VVC
In this approach, the VVC devices on the primary feeder
i.e., LTC, capacitors and regulators are monitored and
controlled by substation SCADA system [20]. The real and
reactive powers at the feeder head and strategic locations are
acquired by the remote terminal unit (RTU) at the substation.
Based on these measurements and the pre-configured set of
rules, the control actions are decided by the SCADA system
and communicated to the VVC devices installed along the
feeder. The rules are configured by running a script in the
SCADA system. Voltage at the end of the feeder (EOF) may
also be given as an additional feedback to the SCADA system.
The main limitation of this ‘rule/script-based’ SCADA
approach is lack of adaptability of the VVC response to the
feeder reconfigurations and various operating needs [12]. The
rules are defined in advance based on voltages and power
flows obtained in the system studies for a certain feeder
configuration. If the feeder configuration is changed, the
control decisions determined by applying the same set of rules
do not necessarily result in best possible VVC performance.
Furthermore, as the rules are set in advance, it is not possible
to control the VVC response in case unexpected operating
condition is observed in real-time. However, some efficiency
improvement can be obtained compared to VVC using
standalone controllers.
C. Integrated VVC (IVVC) or Model-based VVO
Integrated volt-var Control (IVVC) is a significant
advancement in VVO technologies as it facilitates one of the
most desired features in the industry – adaptability to feeder
reconfigurations [21]. IVVC is an advanced DMS function
that uses dynamic operating model of the distribution system
and available real-time measurements to run load flow
function. Then the real-time power flow results obtained are
fed to an optimization engine to determine ‘optimal’ set of
control actions to meet the objectives specified by the utility
without violating operating constraints. The objectives may
maximizing reactive power support etc. or a weighted
combination of them. The resulting control actions from the
optimizing engine such as tap positions of line voltage
regulators, switching sequence of capacitor banks, LTC tap
position are then communicated to the respective VVC
devices installed on the primary wire. The dynamic operating
model is continuously updated by monitoring the switching
status of the VVC devices in the field.
The key benefit of this ‘model-based’ approach compared
to the previous methods is availability of near real-time power
flows from the simulations on the network model, including
those which cannot be measured directly, to perform
optimization. In addition, the influence of DER can also be
considered by incorporating DER models in the dynamic
network model in the IVVC system. As mentioned before,
since the dynamic model uses as-operated state of the system,
its control response is adaptable to the feeder reconfigurations.
D. VVC using Heuristics based Adaptive Control
Some commercial VVC products in offering today use
heuristic approach for performing VVC [22]-[25]. These VVC
systems do not depend on system model for determining
control decisions. Rather, they use real-time measurements of
electrical parameters such as voltages, real and reactive power
flows from LTCs, regulators, capacitors, and customer meters.
These measurements are fed to the heuristics based control
algorithms to make control decisions to achieve utility
specified objectives.
The VVC systems employing heuristics are auto adaptive
to the feeder reconfigurations and DER intermittency as they
take control actions based on changes in the monitored
parameters over time and also takes into account the results
obtained from the previous control decisions. The field
installations of the heuristics based VVO systems have shown
effective performance [23], [24].
III. NEED FOR ADVANCED VOLT-VAR CONTROL
TECHNOLOGIES
There are some major issues of concern in the existing
VVC approaches discussed in the previous section. First,
effective VVC requires accurate estimation of feeder voltage
profiles from the load flow studies. Accurate load allocation is
essential for this [26]. However, the existing widely used load
allocation methods with complex power flow measurements
available at substation and few key measurement points only
do not guarantee error free load allocation [27]. Furthermore,
as opposed to the state estimation procedure in transmission
system, the distribution state estimation is more complex due
to the following reasons which act as barriers to the accurate
estimation of feeder voltage profiles [28], [29]:
 System issues: distribution systems have low X/R
ratios, phase unbalances
 Measurement issues: extremely high ratio of I
measurements to P, Q measurements are available,
available measurements are not sufficient to ensure
feeder observability, lack of redundancy, Non-
simultaneous data samples, communication latency and
bandwidth
It is perceived that the availability of accurate load
information from advanced metering infrastructure (AMI)
could improve the load allocation process resulting in better
estimation of feeder voltage profiles. However, with the
present availability of AMI data at 15 min to 1 hour
resolutions, the response of the VVC systems may not be
quick enough to handle the variabilities of DER such as PV
and electric vehicle loads.
Second issue, as noted in [30], is significant voltage drop
across the service transformers. All the existing VVC
approaches use primary side measurements (before the advent
of AMI) and the control assets to achieve the goal of
maintaining the secondary-side customer voltages within
ANSI limits. In doing so, the voltage drop across the service
transformers has not been accounted for appropriately,
assuming it to be constant in most of the system models [31].
However, the AMI data from the field revealed the fact that
the voltage drop across the service transformers is significant,
and can vary from 2-13V on a 240V base which is more than
half of the ANSI band. Furthermore, adjusting primary side
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controls such as keeping the LTC taps at higher positions to
maintain the voltages at few customer points result in
unnecessary high voltages to the other customers [30], [31].
This, besides being against the objective of CVR, could also
result in high voltages beyond ANSI limits during light load
conditions in the presence of DER.
Third issue is, although the existing VVC approaches
utilize the sophisticated processing and communication
facilities to determine optimized set of control actions, they
finally must rely on few sparsely located slow acting control
assets which can perform limited number of switching
operations per day due to their mechanical design. To limit the
tap operations, typically corresponding constraints are added
to the VVO problem, resulting in highly suboptimal solution.
Distribution systems cannot meet the requirements of smart
grid unless such serious limitations on the voltage control are
addressed.
IV. ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES PROVIDING VVC ON THE
SECONDARY-SIDE
The shortcomings of the existing VVC approaches,
described in Section III, are necessitating the utilities to
explore advanced VVC technologies suitable for future smart
grid. In this section, emerging VVC technologies providing
VVC on the secondary-side and having the potential for
addressing these limitations are explained.
A. Smart Inverters with PV and Wind
Interconnections of small- and large-scale wind and solar
photovoltaic (PV) systems to the distribution system are
growing at a rapid pace. Their penetration levels are often
limited by the distribution utilities because of the adverse
impacts on various distribution operating parameters,
specifically steady-state and transient voltage rise. Inverters
used for solar PV and wind plants can be used to absorb or
inject reactive power to mitigate the impacts of their real
power injection on the distribution system voltages. Such
active voltage regulation by the DER was not allowed by the
standards in the past [32]. The recent amendment of IEEE
1547 standard [33] permits the voltage regulation by DER
using controlled var injection. The inverter based DER can be
operated in the following var control modes [34]:
a) Fixed Unity Power Factor – Q=0: This is the most
common var control approach followed in North America for
both small and large-scale PV systems. In this, the inverter of
the DER is operated at constant unity power factor, with
limited or no reactive power injection into the distribution
grid. Such real power injection without any control towards
voltage regulation creates unacceptable steady-state voltages
during light load periods and undesirable voltage variations
due to DER variabilities.
b) Fixed Power Factor – Q(P): In this mode, the DER
inverters, specifically DER of higher ratings, are operated at
constant power factor such that the voltage rise caused by the
real power injection is mitigated by reactive power
absorption. The power factor is decided during the system
studies before the installation of the DER. It allows full
power output of the DER without causing voltage problems.
 c) Variable Power Factor – Q(P,R/X): In this
approach, the reactive power injection from the DER depends
on both the active power injection as well as the X/R ratio at
the point of common coupling (PCC) and varies according to
the following relationship with ∆V=0:
 ∆V ≈ ∆P×R+∆Q×X
The X/R ratios at PCC and the associated control settings
for var injections by the DER are determined during their
system interconnection studies, similar to the previous case.
d) Volt-var Control: This approach is effective for
systems with high X/R ratio i.e., when the resistance at the
PCC is small compared to the reactance [35]. In this
approach, the utility specifies custom volt-var characteristic,
as shown in Fig. 3, the inverter should follow var injection as
a function of its available var injection capacity and terminal
voltage at a given time. Alternatively, different volt-var
characteristics can be designed for different groups of
inverters. Then depending upon the requirement, the utility
can broadcast control command to the groups of inverters to
convey which volt-var characteristic to follow for var
injection.
% Available vars
Inductive Capacitive
Percent voltage
Inverter
DER
Switch
Grid
Local
Load
Figure 3. Volt-var characteristic of smart inverter.
e) Volt-watt Control: This mode is most effective when
the X/R ratio at PCC is low i.e., the resistance and reactance
are comparable [35]. In this mode, similar to the volt-var
curve, volt-watt curve is defined for the groups of inverters
by the utility. The inverter then reduces the active power
output of the DER according to the terminal voltage and
defined volt-watt curve. Since this method reduces the active
power output of the DER, it should be used only when the
existing voltage regulation controls unable to prevent high
voltages.
B. Smart Inverter with Energy Storage (ES)
The var injection capability of inverters associated with
DER depends upon the inverter rating. Typically, inverters are
rated for full rated output of the DER. When the DER is
injecting rated active power where the voltage rise caused by
the DER is maximum, it does not have much var
compensation capability. To handle this limitation, the active
power output of the DER is limited which is not an attractive
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solution from economic point of view. Energy storage systems
can be used in conjunction with other DER to provide required
var compensation during excessive voltage rise. Additionally,
they can be used to store the energy during light load
conditions and supply the energy during peak loads,
effectively improving the voltage profiles and reducing losses.
 C. Distributed Secondary-side Voltage Regulation Devices
Recognizing the need for voltage regulation on the
secondary-side, many commercial products are being offered
now for achieving VVC on the secondary side [8], [36]-[38].
All these products are electronically controlled, thus provide
quick response and go well beyond the mechanically switched
devices in terms of performance. One of these products [36]
provide electronically controlled shunt capacitive var
compensation to boost the voltages at the connection point on
the secondary-side of a service transformer. Another device
reported in [8] provides VVC using series voltage injection
and shunt reactive and harmonic compensation with a unified
power flow controller (UPFC) architecture as shown in Fig. 4.
Similar products being offered in Europe [37], [38] which
perform voltage regulation by series voltage injection as
shown in Fig. 5.
Series injection
To Source Transformer To Load
Series Voltage
Source
Shunt Current
Source
Figure 4. UPFC architecture.
Utility
Switch Boost
To Source Transformer To Load
Distibution
Transformer Supply to
Bypass
rectifier &
inverter
Rectifier &
Inverter
Figure 5. Series voltage injection.
D. Advanced Switching Controls Leveraging AMI data
The data from AMI installed at customer locations are
providing many insights into the customer voltage and
demand profiles to the utilities. The problems with lack of
accurate load information can also be solved with the
availability AMI data. Some utilities are already using the
AMI data for achieving CVR using LTC control [39].
However, it is expected that the AMI data from many
customer locations with better resolution will be appropriately
integrated into the future VVC systems. Consequently, the
advanced technologies discussed in this Section IV can be
operated with a centralized control to obtain desired VVC
performance required for modern distribution grid.
V. SUMMARY
In this paper, existing and the advanced VVC approaches
are reviewed. Traditional approaches of VVC relying on slow
acting electromechanical control assets installed at sparse
locations on the primary side cannot provide desired VVC
performance with expected high penetration levels of DER,
fast charging electric vehicle loads and meet the energy
efficiency requirements like CVR of the future smart grid. To
meet these challenges, advanced VVC technologies and VVO
based on accurate system models are required. Several
advanced VVC approaches utilizing smart inverter functions,
emerging voltage regulation devices in commercial offering
and AMI data integration are explained. These advanced
approaches providing secondary-side VVC are expected to be
used by the utilities in the near future.
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