Single-Phase Dynamic Voltage Conditioner Control
under Load Variation
H. Hafezi, R. Faranda
Department of Energy
Politecnico di Milano
Via La Masa 34, 20149, Milano, Italy
hossein.hafezi, roberto.faranda@polimi.it
Abstract—Voltage regulation is an important issue for Low
Voltage (LV) distribution networks. The voltage in the point of
delivery to the end users should be kept within standard limits.
The paper deals with a single-phase Dynamic Voltage
Conditioner (DVC) able to keep the output voltage at a set value
under load variations. A double loop control method, with outer
voltage and inner current controller, has been used in order to
have a better control on current transient. Proposed control
method has been designed with MATLAB and several
simulations are presented to verify its performance. The device
can be interesting for Distribution System Operators (DSOs)
and also within smart grid and micro-grid applications.
Index Terms-- Power Quality, Voltage Regulation, Dynamic
Voltage Conditioner, Distribution Network, Open UPQC.
I. INTRODUCTION
Power Quality (PQ) is an important topic from several
point of views. Improving the PQ in an electrical grid can
decrease the system losses and increase transmission and
distribution systems capacity. On the other hand, end users
need a reliable and continuous power supply [1]. New
technologies, such as renewable energy power plants and
power electronics devices included in different equipment, can
cause PQ and voltage problems at different levels, even if they
are installed respecting connection rules [2]. At the same time,
modern systems, like smart grids and micro-grids, are also
requiring autonomous voltage and current PQ conditioners.
In the case of LV networks, Distribution System Operators
(DSOs) are responsible to provide power to costumers
respecting the PQ standards. In particular European standards
impose to DSOs to provide the users a voltage in the point of
delivery within a given range [3]. In Italy, the Italian
Authority AEEGSI (Autorità per l’Energia Elettrica e il Gas e
il Sistema Idrico) has released a new standard upgrading the
target for the continuity of service (progressively reducing the
number and the length of disconnections per customer) in
2011. It mandates to monitor the PQ on the distribution grids
starting from MV bus-bars in primary substations, before 2015
[4]. Hence, PQ improvement, especially in terms of voltage
regulation, became more important for DSOs in LV systems.
978-1-5090-3792-6/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
563
M. C. Falvo
DIAEE – Electrical Engineering
University of Rome Sapienza
Rome, Italy
mariacarmen.falvo@uniroma1.it
Several solutions have been meant dealing with voltage
problems in LV networks. The easiest and traditional way to
compensate long term voltage drops was transformer tap
changer at substations. Some more advanced solution are
series connected asynchronous Uninterruptible Power Supply
(UPS) [5] and parallel connected STATCOM for the reactive
power support and so for power system voltage stability [6],
[7]. Other alternatives are the Unified Power Quality
Conditioner (UPQC) [8] and Open UPQC [9] those can be
considered as an effective and reliable custom device to
manage the voltage variations [10].
Beside these devices, Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR) is
a well-known series connected power electronics device, able
to compensate voltage sags/swells, flickers and other voltage
disturbances. It can be considered as a cost effective series
connected device that can support an area. Several
compensation methods have been introduced [11] and
different topologies have been practiced and tested in field
[12]. Among those, active power injection can be considered
the easiest way to compensate voltage disturbances, however
it needs a large storage system. To be able to manage long
term voltage compensation and regulation, reactive power
injection is required to decrease the storage system size and
system losses [13].
Since DVR is a series connected device, so the whole load
current passes through it and it has to be a voltage generator
that should pass the load current with minimum distortion.
This makes its control more complex and difficult. The basic
device operation is to stay offline most of the time (equipped
with a detection algorithm) and once any disturbance is
detected, to react and to compensate it as fast as possible [14].
Since this offline functionality may cause transient current
problems, different control methods have been analyzed in
literature [15]. Additionally, series connected devices are
usually coupled to the system by means of a transformer. The
power electronics converter is connected at primary side and
the secondary is connected in series to the power line. This
configuration with converter, LC filter at inverter output and
transformer is highly vulnerable to instability and resonant
problems.
 Considering these challenges and continuous functionality
that is not well analyzed in literature, a dynamic conditioner
that is able to regulate continuously voltage at Point of
Common Coupling (PCC) and be able to tolerate wide range
and fast load variations, can be interesting for DSOs and also
several applications within power systems, e.g. voltage
optimization. However this kind of device needs very precise
control method. Especially nowadays modern distribution
systems (including smart grids and micro-grids) have
motivated DSOs to continuously update their systems looking
for new solutions that are operating in several different
scenarios.
This paper presents a single phase control method along
with simulation results utilizing a reactive injecting Dynamic
Voltage Conditioner (DVC) for continuous voltage control at
PCC. The device topology is similar to DVR, however its
mission inside the distribution system is quite different. The
final version of the device will be used as series unit of Open
UPQC and will work within a smart grid architecture [9].
The rest of the paper is organized as follow: Section II
presents the system configuration and theoretical concepts,
control method is described in details in Section III,
simulations are presented in Section IV and finally conclusion
are in Section V.
II. DVC CONFIGURATION AND THEORETICAL CONCEPTS
A. Operation Principle and Vx Calculation
Fig. 1 shows the single phase DVC configuration within a
distribution network. It consists of a full bridge inverter
equipped with capacitor as DC bus storage, switching
inductance, coupling transformer and a bypass switch that can
manage inverter function, bypassing the unit in the case of
inverter failure or any fault on load or grid side. In Fig. 1, Vs is
the grid voltage, Vx is the injected voltage by DVC and VPCC is
the voltage at PCC. XLine and RLine represent distribution line
parameters.
The system should inject a proper Vx in order to keep VPCC
constant therefore at any time KVL (1) should be respected.
VPCC = Vs − Vx (1)
Figure 1. Single phase DVC configuration.
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Figure 2. DVC reactive operation principle.
Theoretically this can be achieved by pure reactive
injection if the injected voltage Vx is always managed to be
perpendicular to the line current IL. However system
(transformer and switching) losses need to be compensated to
keep DC bus voltage constant. So a suitable amount of active
power needs to be absorbed from the network.
Fig. 2 shows the described DVC reactive compensation
principle. The system should inject proper Vx in quadrature to
the line current in order to keep VPCC at set value.
From Fig. 2 using trigonometric equations in right triangle
OAB, the injected voltage magnitude can be calculated as (2).
V xi = VPCC _ ref sin(γ ) − Vs sin(θ i ) (2)
At (2) i can be either 1 or 2, depend on which
compensation state the systems is and the γ is the phase
difference between PCC voltage and load current. θi is the
phase difference between network voltage and load current for
different load conditions. And Vxi is the calculated injected
voltage magnitude. As it can be noticed from Fig. 2 and (2)
the formula gives negative and positive values for Vxi in
different compensation scenarios.
B. Operation Limits
The system, depends on inverter nominal voltage (Vx,max),
load power angle (γ) and voltage reference (VPCC_ref), has
upper and lower compensation limits on Vs [11]. Fig. 3 shows
these limits for two different load conditions considering two
different load currents and corresponding load power angles
IL, γ and I’L, γ’ respectively.
The operation limits are on over voltage and under voltage
compensation capability of the device and has up and down
limits. Those have been explained below.
1) Over voltage
In this case, the inverter nominal voltage, Vx,max imposes
limits on compensation range as shown in Fig. 3. The
maximum value of over voltage that can be compensated with
reactive power only, proportional to the segment OC or OC’,
can be found by (3) for the first load condition.

Figure 3. Self-supported DVC operation limits on voltage compensation
2 2
OC ≡ Vs ,max = Vx ,max + VPCC _ ref sin(γ ) + VPCC _ ref cos(γ ) (3)
This is the maximum grid voltage required to get the
nominal VPCC voltage. For the values upper than this value the
system is not able to compensate over voltage with pure
reactive power. It either needs active power or should stop
doing compensation.
2) Under voltage
The limit during under voltage compensation can be due to
the inverter nominal voltage, Vx,max or the load power angle, γ.
The segment OD or OD’ represent the limit in two
different load conditions due to the Vx,max, so, the minimum Vs
that can be compensated with reactive power, can be found by
(4) for the first load condition:
2 2
OD ≡ Vs ,min_ a = Vx ,max − VPCC _ ref sin(γ ) + VPCC _ ref cos(γ ) (4)
Limits caused by γ is represented with OB or OB’ in two
different load conditions so in this case, the minimum Vs that
can be compensated with reactive power, can be found by (5)
for the first load condition:
Figure 4. Double loop DVC controller
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OB ≡ Vs ,min_ b = VPCC _ ref cos(γ ) (5)
Either (4) or (5) is the minimum grid voltage required to
get the nominal VPCC voltage. For the values lower than this
limit the system is not able to compensate under voltage with
pure reactive power. It either needs active power or should
stop doing compensation.
III. CONTROL METHOD
The control logic for the described DVC can be divided in
two different steps. The first is that the injected voltage
reference values has to be computed continuously so that the
inverter can follow this reference. The second part of
controller is the inverter management controller. Fig. 4 shows
the DVC controller block diagram with dashed lines
separating first and second parts.
First part uses Vs measure, VPCC_ref value with γ and θ
measured values to calculate injected voltage, Vx, magnitude.
However to have better control on PCC voltage, the
calculation result has been used parallel to a PI controller.
VPCC measured fast rms value is continuously compared with
required reference value and the error goes to normal PI
controller. PI output is added to the calculated value and the
result is considered as magnitude of inverter reference voltage.
The controller should be able to keep DC bus voltage
constant. For this reason the DC bus voltage error between
measured value and set value is sent to another PI controller
and the output is considered as phase displacement, δ, needed
to be added to inverter voltage reference phase.
Reference voltage generation is adopted with (6) which is
represented with sine fcn at Fig. 4:
v x (t ) = V x sin(ω I L t + π / 2 − δ ) (6)
Where ωI t is the line current angular frequency and in
L
order to inject a Vx perpendicular to the current (reactive
injection), a π/2 phase displacement has to be added to the line
current angular frequency and δ is necessary to manage the
DC bus voltage and compensate the losses of the device.
Therefore the injected voltage is not completely perpendicular
to the current and there is a small amount of phase
displacement to regulate DC bus voltage and to compensate
system losses.
 The second part of controller (Fig. 4) is meant to force the
inverter to generate the requested reference voltage. Since the
reference voltage (6) is an AC signal, instead of normal PI
controller, P-Resonant (P-R) controller is used inside inverter
controller loop [16]. This P-R controller due to its AC intrinsic
can easily ignore any DC offset at inverter output because of
transformer or any error at inverter control.
It is worth to note that instead of ideal P-R controller a
practical one is implemented with a cut-off frequency to
increase the bandwidth of controller [16]. The transfer
function is reported in (7).
kiωcut s
H P−R ( s) = k p + 2
s + 2ωcut s + ω0
2
P-R output is considered as control current Ic and it is
added to measured line current IL to produce the reference
current for inverter current controller. So, as it can be noticed
the P-R controller is responsible to produce just the small
control current which is added to line current.
The last controller in loop is a Model based Predictive
current Controller (MPC) as described in [17], [18] and shown
in Fig. 4. It generates control voltage, vc for constant switching
frequency PWM strategy module. With this configuration the
inverter switching frequency will be kept constant and it can
avoid problems due to variable switching frequency.
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
The configuration shown in Fig. 1 has been tested by
MATLAB simulations. The parameters of the system are
reported in TABLE I.
or over voltages under load variations, either by adding or
removing considerable portions of the load.
The simulation has been carried out with discrete, fixed
step solver, so the implemented control method easily can be
adopted for digital microprocessor implementation. System
performance dealing with voltage drops and over voltages
under considerable load variations has been tested. The
simulation is done for both 10% under and over voltage at grid
side cases, by adding a certain load and removing the same
load. At both cases system at starting condition works with
10kW + 12kVAr load to compensate grid voltage drops or
over voltages. Then at t =3s, 10kW is added to the load. Power
Factor (PF) is changed from 0.65 to 0.85 and current is
(7) increased from 66A to 100A rms. Transient behavior of the
device is shown. Then at t =5s the 10kW is removed from the
load and system transient starts. So the system comes back to
the starting condition with 10kW + 12kVAr load, but with
10% voltage drop or over voltage at grid side.
A. Under Voltage Compensation
The grid voltage is simulated to get 10% voltage drop. The
DVC is working under constant load to compensate this
voltage drop and set PCC voltage to nominal value. Fig. 5
shows DVC response to load increment during voltage drop
compensation.
As it can be noticed in Fig. 5, the device is able to deal
with this critical change. Voltage drop at grid voltage is shown
at Fig. 5(a). The disturbance in PCC voltage is negligible in
Fig. 5(b) and thanks to MPC current controller there is no any
inrush current through the load. There is a fast change in
injected voltage in Fig. 5(c) due to the critical change in line
current phase. As it is shown in (6) any change in line current
angular frequency ω I t affects Vx reference magnitude and
L

TABLE I. SYSTEM PARAMETERS phase values.

Nominal grid voltage 230 V AC
Nominal frequency 50 Hz
Transformer turn ratio 1.5
Coupling inductance L 1 mH
Inverter output passive filter C 100 µF
DC bus capacitor 74.8 mF
DC bus voltage reference 800V
Inverter switching frequency 20 kHz

Controller gains values are given in TABLE II. As it can

be noticed, the DC bus controller is slower than the VPCC
controller. This is to avoid DC bus controller distortion effect
on the main VPCC controller.

TABLE II. CONTROLLERS GAINS

DC bus PI kp=0.5, ki=5
VPCC PI kp=2, ki=40
P-R regulator kp=0.2, kR=2

Current MPC parameters are set to the system values [17],

[18]. The controller is fast enough to deal with fast voltage Figure 5. Load increment under 10% voltage drop compensation (a) grid
sags and swells also, however this study is focused on device voltage, (b) PCC voltage, (c) injected voltage, (d) line current
continuous operation to compensate long term voltage drops

566
 Fig. 6 shows the DVC response to removing the same load Fig. 8 shows the system response to remove 10kW load. At
(10kW) at t =5s under the same 10% voltage drop. So, the t=5s, the load is removed and system comes back to the
DVC is working with 20kW + 12kVAr before t =5s and, starting condition. As it can be seen in Fig. 8(b), PCC voltage
removing 10kW, the system comes back to starting condition. is not affected with this critical load change. Fig. 8(c) shows
Fig. 6(a) shows the grid voltage, Fig. 6(b) depicts the PCC that, by changing the load current, the injected voltage
voltage that is not affected with this load change, injected magnitude and phase have been changed accordingly. And
voltage experiences a phase and magnitude change because of current waveform is shown at Fig. 8(d) and smoothly changes.
the quite critical change of load phase, as shown in Fig. 6(c).
The line current is smoothly changes and there is no over or
under shoot on it Fig. 6(d).
By changing the injected voltage phase, there is a small
change in VPCC phase too. Although this change is not visible
in Fig. 6(b), because the injected voltage comparing to the
VPCC has a small magnitude, Fig. 6(b) and Fig. 6(c) have
different voltage scales.

Figure 7. Load increment under 10% over voltage compensation (a) grid
voltage, (b) PCC voltage, (c) injected voltage, (d) line current

Figure 6. Load decrement under 10% voltage drop compensation (a) grid
voltage, (b) PCC voltage, (c) injected voltage, (d) line current

B. Over Voltage Compensation

In order to examine the system response to load variation
with over voltage compensation, the grid voltage is simulated
to have 10% over voltage. The DVC is working under
constant load to compensate this voltage deviation and set
PCC voltage to nominal value. Then the load variation is
applied to the system. System response to the added load is
shown in Fig. 7.
Till t =3s the system is working under constant initial
conditions explained before and compensating 10% over
voltage. At t =3s the load increment has been applied to the Figure 8. Load decrement under 10% over voltage compensation (a) grid
system. As it can be seen, the system is able to manage this voltage, (b) PCC voltage, (c) injected voltage, (d) line current
critical load change. Fig. 7(b) shows that VPCC is not affected
by this change. Injected voltage with phase and magnitude C. Some Comments
changes in Fig. 7(c), and the line current changes with no
inrush or over/under shoot in Fig. 7(d) are illustrated Simulation results show that the control method is able to
respectively. deal with large load variations. The vector representation to
the changes is shown in Fig. 9. The system moves from IL,
DVC response to remove the same 10kW load during over Vs1,2 and Vx1,2 to I’L, V’s1,2 and V’x1,2. Adding load, the PF
voltage compensation is presented too. The DVC was increases, so the injected voltage magnitude is also increased,
compensating 10% over voltage with 20kW + 12kVAr load.

567
as it is shown in Fig. 9, and it is consistent with Fig. 5(c) and
Fig. 7(c) simulation results.
Figure 9. Vector representation of load change
Another comment; changing active load doesn’t change
the Vx phase and magnitude and consequently the control
limits so much. However, if the change on reactive power is
applied, the voltage and phase change will be wider. Here the
system capability to deal with transients was in interest and
the transient behavior is quite the same for either active or
reactive load variation.
V. CONCLUSIONS
The paper presents control method for single phase voltage
regulator capable to keep PCC voltage regulated under grid
side over or under voltage. The transient behavior of the
device under load variation has been investigated and shown
by MATLAB simulations. The results show the proposed
control method for DVC guarantees a good response under
load variations and it can be used in different configurations
within LV distribution networks.
The described device will be realized as Open UPQC
series unit with all the functionalities within smart grid.
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