Implementation of non-intrusive energy saving estimation for Volt/VAr control of smart distribution system

There has been a growing interest among power distribution utilities to explore smart grid technologies to improve the operational efficiency and reliability. As electricity distribution grid is evolving to become “smart”, energy demand reduction is one of the goals for the distribution utilities. In order to obtain this goal, utilities need to commit significant financial resources. Therefore, it became important to assess the benefit of new technologies such as Volt/VAr control (VVC). To compute the energy savings due to VVC implementation, existing algorithms are intrusive, and generally require altering the distribution system control settings and operating points, which is undesirable for system operator. On the other hand, these may require large amount of historical data. In this paper, implementation of a new non-intrusive energy saving estimation algorithm has been presented for integrated Volt/VAr control by Avista Utilities in Northwest USA. Developed algorithm utilizes measurements from smart distribution system. Develop algorithm allows studying the energy saving in long term as it requires no change in control settings of actual distribution system. Satisfactory results have been obtained and validated against field data from experiments on real feeders by Avista Utilities.