Active power management in power distribution grids: Disturbance modeling and rejection

This paper presents a control strategy for enabling a distribution system operator (DSO) to manage a power distribution grid towards an active power reference. This is accomplished by allowing the DSO to utilize flexibility in production and consumption. The control system consists of a feedforward based on estimates of inflexible consumption profiles, a feedback based on flexible asset dynamics, and a dispatch algorithm for minimizing active power loss. The estimation approach is validated on real consumption data and illustrates the method's applicability on both a step-ahead and day-ahead scale, which makes it suited for a variety of control scenarios. Simulations demonstrate the control system's ability to track an active power reference and show a 3% reduction in active power loss, compared to a strategy of uniformly dispatching the power between assets.