Fairness–Performance Trade-Offs in Active Power Curtailment for Radial Distribution Grids with Battery Energy Storage

The increasing integration of decentralized technologies such as photovoltaic (PV) systems and electric vehicles (EVs) poses significant challenges to the reliable operation of radial distribution grids. In this paper, we study Active Power Curtailment (APC), which is a cost-effective method that maintains grid safety by temporarily reducing power injections. However, APC can place disproportional curtailment burden on grid buses that may in fact undermine the continuous adoption of PVs and EVs. In this work, we propose different novel APC methods that incorporate fairness properties for radial grids with PVs, EVs, and battery energy storage systems (BESSs). In addition, we integrate BESSs and show their benefits in lowering APC levels and achieving better PV and EV utilization while enhancing fairness. The proposed APC designs allow for fast decision making and can be generalized to unseen grids. To do so, a two-step solution is adopted, where in the first step, a reinforcement learning (RL)-based agent determines uniform per-feeder APC and BESS actions, and in the second step, heuristic controllers disaggregate these actions into tailored per-bus decisions while incorporating fairness features. Through simulations, the controllers are shown to mitigate over 99% of constraint violations and significantly enhance fairness in curtailment distribution. BESSs are shown to improve the violations count and APC trade-off, leaning towards reduced APC percentages. Finally, we exemplify how the solution generalizes effectively to unseen grid configurations.