Active power quality management (APQM) in smart micro grids

In this manuscript, a new concept of active power quality Management (APQM) is presented. In which, instead of solely controlling the nodal power quality in a power system, the power quality is seen as a network level issue and a high level management method to deal with this issue in distribution networks is presented. Analogous to how Active Network Management (ANM) enables increased levels of hosting capacity for interconnection of DERs by managing thermal and voltage constraints, APQM maps consumer requirements and technical and regulatory standards to specific areas and actively manages operational power quality limits, rather than relying on interconnection planning screens. APQM includes re-structuring of distribution network and integration of renewable energy sources (RES) to increase the supply reliability for critical loads, smart management and optimized installation of power quality improvement devices (PQID) to enhance the distributed power quality improvement, adding ancillary functionalities to installed distributed energy resource (DER) power electronic converters to increase the cost-effectiveness of distributed energy resources. Last but not the least, in this paper, also coordinated control of the PQIDs and high-penetration non-linear loads will be discussed.