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

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.