Coordination of Multiple BESS Units in a Low-Voltage Distribution Network Using Leader–Follower and Leaderless Control

Margarita Kitso, Bagas Ihsan Priambodo, Joel Alpízar-Castillo (), Laura Ramírez-Elizondo and Pavol Bauer
Additional contact information
Margarita Kitso: DC Systems, Energy Conversion and Storage, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands
Bagas Ihsan Priambodo: DC Systems, Energy Conversion and Storage, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands
Joel Alpízar-Castillo: DC Systems, Energy Conversion and Storage, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands
Laura Ramírez-Elizondo: DC Systems, Energy Conversion and Storage, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands
Pavol Bauer: DC Systems, Energy Conversion and Storage, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands

Energies, 2025, vol. 18, issue 17, 1-22

Abstract: High shares of photovoltaic energy in low-voltage distribution systems lead to voltage limit violations. Deploying energy storage systems in the network can compensate for the mismatch between the generation and the consumption; nevertheless, the mismatch is unevenly distributed throughout the network, suggesting aggregated control strategies as a solution. This paper proposes two coordination control strategies of batteries to address network overvoltage conditions caused by high penetration of photovoltaic systems. The leader–follower coordination strategy determines a battery’s utilization factor by using the node closest to a voltage violation as a reference. The leaderless control uses a shared utilization factor to avoid excessive usage of a particular agent in the network. We tested both approaches in the 18-node CIGRE network for scenarios when not all agents were available and when they had different starting states-of-charge. Our results demonstrate that both strategies are capable of voltage control; however, the leader–follower control leads to uneven storage usage, ultimately leading to short-time failure to comply with the voltage limits under extreme conditions where neighbouring agents must compensate for the unavailable one. Conversely, the leaderless approach presents more balanced use of the agents thanks to the distributed utilization factor, resulting in a more robust control strategy.

Keywords: battery energy storage systems; coordinated control; distribution grid; voltage regulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/17/4566/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/18/17/4566/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:18:y:2025:i:17:p:4566-:d:1736362

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Cassie Shen

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().