Conservation Voltage Reduction with feedback from Advanced Metering Infrastructure

Abstract

Dominion Virginia Power's Conservation Voltage Reduction program has demonstrated energy savings of up to 4% by optimizing off-peak voltage. The key innovation is incorporating end-of-line voltage data from every customer meter, which eliminates the need to maintain an electrical model of the feeder. CVR is accomplished via DMS control of the load tap changer based on voltage feedback from AMI meter data. Analysis of AMI voltage data determines a subset of meters representing the lowest customer voltages; these meters are read every 15 minutes and used to determine the optimal feeder voltage. A statistical evaluation of pilot feeders shows a CVR factor of 0.92% reduction in energy for each 1% reduction in voltage. In addition, customer voltage monitoring identifies operational issues prior to customer calls. The program is projected to save an average of 2.8% of annual energy when applied system-wide, and may be expanded to accomplish on-peak demand reduction.