Low voltage grid resilience: innovations in active control strategies based on power electronics

The integration of single-phase systems such as Distributed Energy Resources (DER), electrical vehicles (EVs) or heating pumps in the Low Voltage (LV) grid, introduce voltage unbalances as they do not work at the same time, not at the same working conditions. Furthermore, these systems are connected in the LV grid by users under low permitting requirements. Therefore, there is not much visibility of their actual deployment by the DSO and so, traditional control strategies are not enough to accomplish this new scenario so lower grid hosting capacity is achieved. Integrating DSTATCOMs in the LV systems shall enable the implementation of decarbonizing strategies without impacting the current, and above all, the future stability and deployment of the LV grids which could be the main advantage if compared to passive control strategies or other active control ones, which are connected in series. This paper will provide the results obtained from the simulations and real data from the proof of concept tested in the Demonstration & Experimentation Unit (UDEX) Research Infrastructure and give insightful conclusions regarding the suitability of active control strategies based on DSTATCOM in grid derivation.