Physics-informed distributed reinforcement learning for privacy-aware voltage regulation using local smart meter data

Centralized reinforcement learning-based voltage regulation in distribution networks is becoming increasingly difficult due to the growing penetration of distributed energy resources, high computational burden, repeated power flow calculations, and increasing privacy concerns. This paper proposes a physics-informed fully distributed reinforcement learning framework that enables autonomous voltage regulation using only local smart meter data. A Thevenin-equivalent-based local voltage estimation model and a hybrid correction mechanism are developed to support accurate local decision-making without synchronized global measurements or centralized power flow solvers. A lightweight coordination mechanism is further introduced to refine the actions of independently trained local agents. Case studies show that the proposed framework reduces voltage violations by approximately 80%, achieves performance close to that of power flow-based training environments, and achieves a training speedup of about 6 × . The results also indicate that the relaxation factors in the reward function and the coordination scaler are critical to voltage-regulation efficiency, whereas the discount factor has a smaller impact. These findings demonstrate the practicality of the proposed framework for privacy-aware fully distributed voltage regulation. • A physics-informed distributed learning method is proposed for voltage regulation. • Local Thevenin models support privacy-aware voltage estimation at smart meters. • A hybrid correction scheme improves voltage magnitude estimation accuracy. • A coordination layer mitigates violations caused by excessive actions. • Smart meter with intelligent decision-making ability support to power grid management.