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Coordinated voltage control C4.602
in transmission networks

This document provides an overview of the current N. Martins – Brazil (Convenor)

analysis methods and practices on the coordinated S. Corsi – Italy (Convenor)
transmission network voltage control, showing that its
four hierarchical levels appear more or less explicitly in C. Taylor (USA)
the different operational practices. The expected per- J. C. R. Ferraz (Brazil)
formances at the different levels are specified in terms C. Vournas (Greece)
of dynamics, operation quality and system security, K. Uhlen (Norway)
C. Cañizares (Canada)
emphasizing aspects that seem to be technically more
L. Pereira (USA)
advanced, or original. As the automation level varies
G. Nery Taranto (Brazil)
among the various existing projects (in some cases also
M. Pozzi (Italy)
the manual control is included), the degree of system G. Fabrice (France)
security, reliability and quality of operation will differ M. C. Perdomo (Colombia)
accordingly. H. Lefebvre (France)
Several broad lines of research and fully commis- N. Miller (USA)
sioned advanced engineering projects, to improve the J. Paserba (USA)
coordinated voltage control of transmission networks P. Kundur (Canada)
are described in broad lines along with the related soft- J. Van Hecke (Belgium)
ware/hardware requirements for power system and T. Van Cutsem (Belgium)
equipment monitoring, operator support decision sys- J. Sanchez-Gasca (USA)
V. Ajjarapu (USA)
tems, implementation aspects of tertiary level con-
trol, link between coordinated voltage control and wide
area protection, etc.
This document constitutes a useful addition to the tices and future trends, providing also a list of reports
rich set of references from past CIGRE and IEEE work. produced by CIGRE and IEEE as evidence of the rele-
In particular this document delivers original mate- vance of the main topic of this report.
rial on the coordination of voltage controls, on current
practices in various countries, the technological issues
involved, as well as the existing methods of analysis
and software tools.
The CIGRE C4.602 Task Force members and con- This chapter describes the coordinated voltage con-
tributors add up to more than 30 individuals, repre- trol schemes in current operation in Italy, France and
senting 17 organizations in 10 countries. The follow- Belgium. Secondary Voltage Control systems were first
ing provides a brief summary of each of the major introduced in some European countries as a means to
chapters. improve voltage quality, security and flexibility of oper-
ation. Secondary control involves splitting the network
into theoretically non-interacting areas, with the volt-
ages within each area being independently controlled.
Secondary Voltage Control automatically adjusts the
reactive power of certain generating units to control the
This chapter describes the transmission network volt- voltage at a specific point (known as the pilot node) in
age control problem, the voltage control hierarchical the area, this being regarded as representative of the volt-
schemes adopted in various countries, the current prac- ages at all points in the area. The similarities and

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Hierarchical control structure for the coordinated regulation of the transmission network voltages

differences among these schemes are described in this main design choices for the various equipment, practi-
chapter. cal implementation aspects, and expected dynamic per-
formance.

Automatic regulation of power plant high-side volt-

age through AVR line drop compensation partially The main results of dynamic performance compli-
increases grid voltage support at the cost of possibly ances checking from field commissioning tests and long-
introducing destabilizing interactions between primary term operation monitoring, are described for the Italian
voltage regulators. Modern digital schemes achieve the and the Belgian hierarchical voltage control systems.
intended objectives with minimum adverse interactions. In the Italian case, the commissioning and monitor-
Several existing schemes with modern designs are ing activities were carried out at both power plant level
described in this chapter. and regional control center level. Information is also
given on the future tests that will be carried out to assess
- the performance of the National Voltage Regulator
(NVR) and Losses Minimization Control (LMC), which
constitute the Tertiary Voltage Regulation level, to be
For systems with very long transmission lines and commissioned in late 2007.
remote generation, the possible areas without genera- Regarding results on the Belgian hierarchical voltage
tion can have a conceptually equivalent SVR by coordi- regulation, only brief comments were provided.
nating the switching of reactive shunt banks as well as
effectively changing the voltage set-points of either the
static var compensators or the transformers load tap
changers. This chapter, as well as others, is complemented Various computer tools developed or used by utili-
with a few appendices that are listed along the text. ties, manufacturers, universities and research centers for
the analysis and design of hierarchical voltage control
schemes are described in this chapter. This chapter is also
The essential design characteristics of both the hier- complemented with appendices describing simulation
archical voltage control systems considered in Chapter results obtained with real systems, as well as with smaller
2 and the advanced high side voltage control regulators systems for tutorial purposes. All information provided
described in Chapter 3 are provided in this Chapter. by active members of this task force on available software
These characteristics comprise: control system architec- was included (albeit with necessary editorial changes) in
ture, functional organization, hardware and software this chapter.

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Application plan of the hierarchical Secondary Voltage Regulation in the Italian grid.

ing both angle and voltage stability. This chapter includes

a cost-benefit analysis between an SVC based alternative
for the regulation of the Italian transmission network
Use of FACTS controllers for network voltage sup- voltage profile and the actual SVR and TVC schemes
port, mainly SVC and STATCOM, has been considered implemented in Italy. With the advent of restructuring
in recent years, even though the costs involved do not and energy market deregulation, hierarchical voltage con-
always justify this choice and, if extensively applied, they trol systems are becoming increasingly more attractive.
would require a coordinated control system similar to System operators recognize that SVR and TVR simplify
that described here for generators. These equipment are the automatic control of the transmission network volt-
however important for dynamic voltage support, improv- ages, allow for a more direct estimation of the sys-

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Voltage control for 500kV power grid in Tokyo Electric Power Co.

tem reactive power margins and also make possible the

identification of the contributions of different partici- This brief chapter attempts to make an overall assess-
pants to the voltage regulation ancillary service. Differ- ment of the task force work and associated technical
ent ownership may present difficulties in building new report, which were considered very positive. It also sug-
coordinated voltage regulation schemes or upgrading gests topics for additional work in the area, which include:
existing ones, but such an important technical matter voltage emergency control and voltage wide-area pro-
calls for specific regulatory rules. tection in transmission networks. ■

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