  Adding photovoltaic (PV) systems in distribution networks, while desirable
for reducing the carbon footprint, can lead to voltage violations under high
solar-low load conditions. The inability of traditional volt-VAr control in
eliminating all the violations is also well-known. This paper presents a novel
coordinated inverter control methodology that leverages system-wide situational
awareness to significantly improve hosting capacity (HC). The methodology
employs a real-time voltage-reactive power (VQ) sensitivity matrix in an
iterative linear optimizer to calculate the minimum reactive power intervention
from PV inverters needed for mitigating over-voltage without resorting to
active power curtailing or requiring step voltage regulator setting changes.
The algorithm is validated using the EPRI J1 feeder under an extensive set of
realistic use cases and is shown to provide 3x improvement in HC under all
scenarios.
